Motivational Quotes

Silence

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

- Herder, Johann Gottfried Von

Best Quotes about Silence

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

Voltaire

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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

Zacharia

Not to ask is not be denied.

Dryden, John

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

William Shakespeare

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

10.

Well-timed silence is the most commanding expression.

Helprin, Mark

11.

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

12.

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

Dickson, R A

13.

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

Mcginley, Phyllis

14.

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

Abraham Lincoln

15.

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

16.

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

Bagehot, Walter

17.

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

Herder, Johann Gottfried Von

18.

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

19.

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

20.

The most profound statements are often said in silence.

Lynn Johnston

21.

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

Seneca

22.

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

John Tillotson

23.

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

24.

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

Gibran, Kahlil

25.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

26.

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

27.

Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.

Gaulle, Charles De

28.

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

Smith, Sydney

29.

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

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

30.

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

31.

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

Xenocrates of Chalcedon

32.

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

Sy Rosen and Christian Williams

33.

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

34.

Silence is argument carried on by other means.

Guevara, Che

35.

Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.

Samuel Johnson

36.

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

Syrus, Publilius

37.

In silence man can most readily preserve his integrity.

Meister Eckhart

38.

'Tis best to be silent in a bad cause.

Ovid

39.

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

Abraham Lincoln

40.

With silence favor me. (Favete Linguis)

Horace

41.

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

Crapsey, Adelaide

42.

Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer.

Muhammad Ali

43.

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

44.

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.

Publilius Syrus

45.

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

46.

Silence is a text easy to misread.

A. A. Attanasio

47.

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

William Penn

48.

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

Beaumont, Francis

49.

When the eagles are silent the parrots begin to jabber.