Motivational Quotes

Silence

Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.

- Carlyle, Thomas

Best Quotes about Silence

You are a slave to what you do say, a master of what you don't say.

I don't know whether to keep silent and let people think I am ignorant or open my mouth and release all doubts.

It is better to be silent, and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.

Engel, Silvan

If you don't say anything, you won't be called on to repeat it.

Coolidge, Calvin

It is a great thing to know the season for speech and the season for silence.

Seneca

I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.

Thoreau, Henry David

Silence is argument carried on by other means.

Guevara, Che

I went down with the ship but I kept my mouth shut so I didn't drown like the rest of them.

Learn to get in touch with silence within yourself, and know that everything in this life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.

KuBler-Ross, Elisabeth

10.

The silent dog is the first to bite.

Proverb

11.

There is a wide difference between speaking to deceive, and being silent to be impenetrable.

Voltaire

12.

I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.

Beckett, Samuel

13.

It is more noble by silence to avoid an injury than by argument to overcome it.

Beaumont, Francis

14.

Silence may be golden, but can you think of a better way to entertain someone than to listen to him?

Young, Brigham

15.

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.

Xenocrates of Chalcedon

16.

The man who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

Hubbard, Elbert

17.

The Pause; that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, however so felicitous, could accomplish it.

Twain, Mark

18.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

19.

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature -- trees, flowers, grass -- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. We need silence to be able to touch souls.

Mother Teresa

20.

Silence is never more golden than when you hold it long enough to get all the facts before you speak.

21.

And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. [New Testament]

Bible

22.

The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint.

23.

Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.

Martin Fraquhar Tupper

24.

Silence is the sanctuary of the prudent, it conceals not only secrets but also imperfections.

Zacharia

25.

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation. Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads on like a gray vegetation.

Arp, Jean

26.

'Tis best to be silent in a bad cause.

Ovid

27.

A silent mouth is melodious.

Proverb, Irish

28.

Consider the whale: It never gets into trouble until it comes up and starts spouting.

29.

What she doesn't say is just as important as what she does say -- but there's so much more of it. I think from now on I'm going to stick to what she actually does say because I don't have that kind of time.

Katz, Jonathan

30.

If you keep your mouth shut you will never put your foot in it.

O'Malley, Austin

31.

Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.

Eliot, George

32.

The rest is silence.

William Shakespeare

33.

These be three silent things: The Falling snow... the hour before the dawn... the mouth of one just dead.

Crapsey, Adelaide

34.

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.

Publilius Syrus

35.

Silence is the perfectos herald of joy. I were but little happy if I could say how much.

Shakespeare, William

36.

It is great wisdom to know how to be silent and to look at neither the remarks, nor the deeds, nor the lives of others.

John of the Cross, St.

37.

It takes more time and effort and delicacy to learn the silence of a people than to learn its sounds. Some people have a special gift for this. Perhaps this explains why some missionaries, notwithstanding their efforts, never come to speak properly, to communicate delicately through silences. Although they speak with the accent of natives they remain forever thousands of miles away. The learning of the grammar of silence is an art much more difficult to learn than the grammar of sounds.

Illich, Ivan

38.

The greatest admiration gives rise not to words, but to silence.

Musonnius

39.

When little is done, little is said; silence is the mother of truth.

Disraeli, Benjamin

40.

There are times when silence has the loudest voice.

Brownlow, Leroy

41.

When the eagles are silent the parrots begin to jabber.

Churchill, Winston

42.

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

Josh Billings

43.

Keep your mouth closed until your mind is in gear.

44.

Silence is more musical than any song.

Christina Rossetti

45.

Touch not the flute when drums are sounding around; when fools have the word, the wise will be silent.

Herder, Johann Gottfried Von

46.

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.

Thoreau, Henry David

47.

Silence is one of the great arts of conversation, as allowed by Cicero himself, who says,'there is not only an art, but an eloquence in it.'A well bred woman may easily and effectually promote the most useful and elegant conversation without speaking a word. The modes of speech are scarcely more variable than the modes of silence.

Tom Blair

48.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

Abraham Lincoln

49.

That man's silence is wonderful to listen to.

Hardy, Thomas

50.

Silence is a text easy to misread.

A. A. Attanasio