Motivational Quotes

Silence

Well-timed silence is the most commanding expression.

- Helprin, Mark

Best Quotes about Silence

There's nothing wrong with having nothing to say -- unless you insist on saying it.

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

Bible

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

Young, Brigham

'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.

Abraham Lincoln

Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unshown marble of great sculpture. The silent bear no witness against themselves.

Huxley, Aldous

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

Zacharia

Learn taciturnity and let that be your motto!

Burns, Robert

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

True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.

William Penn

10.

An inability to stay quiet is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind.

Bagehot, Walter

11.

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

William Shakespeare

12.

In silence man can most readily preserve his integrity.

Meister Eckhart

13.

The silent influence of books, is a mighty power in the world; and there is a joy in reading them known only to those who read them with desire and enthusiasm. Silent, passive, and noiseless though they be, they yet set in action countless multitudes, and change the order of nations.

Giles, Henry

14.

There are times when silence has the loudest voice.

Brownlow, Leroy

15.

Their silence is sufficient praise.

Terence

16.

'Tis best to be silent in a bad cause.

Ovid

17.

An now the silences come in a single lifetime, in a single year... when species die, leaving a silent space in the world song that can never be filled.

Delint, Charles

18.

When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.

Carlyle, Thomas

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.

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

22.

Let us be silent that we may hear the whispers of the gods.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

23.

When thou art quiet and silent, then art thou as God was before nature and creature; thou art that which God then wats; thou art that whereof he made thy nature and creature: Then thou hearest and seest even with that wherewith God himself saw and heard in thee, before every thine own willing or thine own seeing began.

Boehme, Jacob

24.

A wise old owl sat on an oak; The more he saw the less he spoke; The less he spoke the more he heard; Why aren't we like that wise old bird?

Richards, Edward Hersey

25.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

26.

The whisper of a pretty girl can be heard further than the roar of a lion.

Proverb, Arabian

27.

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

28.

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

29.

The silent dog is the first to bite.

Proverb

30.

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.

31.

A good word is an easy obligation; but not to speak ill, requires only our silence, which costs nothing.

John Tillotson

32.

That man's silence is wonderful to listen to.

Hardy, Thomas

33.

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

Coolidge, Calvin

34.

The rest is silence.

William Shakespeare

35.

Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.

Martin Fraquhar Tupper

36.

It ain't a bad plan to keep still occasionally even when you know what you're talking about.

Hubbard, Kin

37.

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

Xenocrates of Chalcedon

38.

Sticks and stones are hard on bones aimed with angry art. Words can sting like anything but silence breaks the heart.

Mcginley, Phyllis

39.

Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish.

Colton, Charles Caleb

40.

Oppression can only survive through silence.

Carmen de Monteflores

41.

A man's silence is wonderful to listen to.

Thomas Hardy

42.

Sometimes silence is not golden -- just yellow.

43.

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

44.

Silence is the great teacher, and to learn its lessons you must pay attention to it. There is no substitute for the creative inspiration, knowledge, and stability that come from knowing how to contact your core of inner silence. The great Sufi poet Rumi wrote, Only let the moving waters calm down, and the sun and moon will be reflected on the surface of your being.

Chopra, Deepak

45.

X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.

Dickson, R A

46.

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

47.

When the eagles are silent the parrots begin to jabber.

Churchill, Winston

48.

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