Motivational Quotes

Silence

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

Best Quotes about Silence

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

Mcginley, Phyllis

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

Josh Billings

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

Thoreau, Henry David

There are grammatical errors even in his silence.

Stanislaw J. Lec

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

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

The most profound statements are often said in silence.

Lynn Johnston

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

Sometimes silence is not golden -- just yellow.

10.

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

11.

I am better able to retract what I did not say than what I did.

Gabirol, Ibn

12.

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

John Tillotson

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Plutarch

17.

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.

18.

When the eagles are silent the parrots begin to jabber.

Churchill, Winston

19.

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

20.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

21.

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

Coolidge, Calvin

22.

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

Young, Brigham

23.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

24.

Illich, Ivan

25.

A silent mouth is melodious.

Proverb, Irish

26.

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

Abraham Lincoln

27.

Learn taciturnity and let that be your motto!

Burns, Robert

28.

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

Xenocrates of Chalcedon

29.

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

Zacharia

30.

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

Proverb, Arabian

31.

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

Voltaire

32.

Their silence is sufficient praise.

Terence

33.

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

O'Malley, Austin

34.

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?

Marceau, Marcel

35.

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

Beaumont, Francis

36.

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

37.

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

38.

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.

Publilius Syrus

39.

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

40.

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

Engel, Silvan

41.

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

42.

Well-timed silence is the most commanding expression.

Helprin, Mark

43.

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

Bible

44.

Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.

Martin Fraquhar Tupper

45.

Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.