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

16.

Silence is the virtue of fools.

Sir Francis Bacon

17.

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

Beckett, Samuel

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

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.

Well-timed silence is the most commanding expression.

Helprin, Mark

23.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

24.

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

Abraham Lincoln

25.

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

26.

Silence is more musical than any song.

Christina Rossetti

27.

Learn taciturnity and let that be your motto!

Burns, Robert

28.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

29.

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

Coolidge, Calvin

30.

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

31.

Oppression can only survive through silence.

Carmen de Monteflores

32.

That man's silence is wonderful to listen to.

Hardy, Thomas

33.

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

Xenocrates of Chalcedon

34.

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

35.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

36.

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

Dante Alighieri

37.

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

38.

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

Seneca

39.

Sometimes a whisper speaks volumes.

Sheddan, Scott

40.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

41.

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

42.

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

Proverb, Arabian

43.

Silence is a text easy to misread.

A. A. Attanasio

44.

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

Bagehot, Walter

45.

Those that are silent profess consent.

46.

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

47.

Their silence is sufficient praise.

Terence

48.

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

Young, Brigham

49.

In silence man can most readily preserve his integrity.

Meister Eckhart

50.

Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.