Motivational Quotes

Silence

'Tis best to be silent in a bad cause.

- Ovid

Best Quotes about Silence

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

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

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

Voltaire

Sometimes silence is not golden -- just yellow.

Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech.

Plutarch

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

Crapsey, Adelaide

Their silence is sufficient praise.

Terence

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

Xenocrates of Chalcedon

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

O'Malley, Austin

10.

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

Josh Billings

11.

A fair request should be followed by the deed in silence.

Dante Alighieri

12.

The most profound statements are often said in silence.

Lynn Johnston

13.

Not merely an absence of noise, Real Silence begins when a reasonable being withdraws from the noise in order to find peace and order in his inner sanctuary.

Peter Minard

14.

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

15.

There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

16.

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

17.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

18.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

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

Herder, Johann Gottfried Von

20.

Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.

Martin Fraquhar Tupper

21.

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

Hubbard, Kin

22.

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

Bagehot, Walter

23.

I often regret that I have spoken; never that I have been silent.

Syrus, Publilius

24.

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

Seneca

25.

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

Abraham Lincoln

26.

Silence is the true friend that never betrays.

Confucius

27.

He who does not know how to be silent will not know how to speak.

Ausonius

28.

With silence favor me. (Favete Linguis)

Horace

29.

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

Zacharia

30.

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

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.

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

33.

Words can sting like anything, but silence breaks the heart.

Mcginley, Phyllis

34.

A silent mouth is melodious.

Proverb, Irish

35.

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

Shakespeare, William

36.

There are grammatical errors even in his silence.

Stanislaw J. Lec

37.

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

Coolidge, Calvin

38.

A man's silence is wonderful to listen to.

Thomas Hardy

39.

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

40.

Silence is a text easy to misread.

A. A. Attanasio

41.

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

Proverb, Arabian

42.

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

43.

When the eagles are silent the parrots begin to jabber.

Churchill, Winston

44.

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

45.

He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation perfectly delightful.

Smith, Sydney

46.

Words are a heavy thing...they weigh you down. If birds talked, they couldn't fly.

Sy Rosen and Christian Williams

47.

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

Musonnius

48.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

49.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

50.

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