Motivational Quotes

Silence

Sometimes a whisper speaks volumes.

- Sheddan, Scott

Best Quotes about Silence

Not to ask is not be denied.

Dryden, John

Oppression can only survive through silence.

Carmen de Monteflores

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

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

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

William Shakespeare

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

Sometimes silence is not golden -- just yellow.

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

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.

10.

Silence is the virtue of fools.

Sir Francis Bacon

11.

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

William Penn

12.

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

Josh Billings

13.

When the eagles are silent the parrots begin to jabber.

Churchill, Winston

14.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

15.

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

Coolidge, Calvin

16.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

17.

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

18.

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

Mcginley, Phyllis

19.

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

20.

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

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

21.

Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding. [Proverbs 17:28]

Bible

22.

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

23.

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

Dante Alighieri

24.

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

25.

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

26.

The silent dog is the first to bite.

Proverb

27.

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

Proverb, Arabian

28.

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

Crapsey, Adelaide

29.

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

Beckett, Samuel

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Those that are silent profess consent.

33.

You are a slave to what you do say, a master of what you don't say.

34.

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

Smith, Sydney

35.

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

36.

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

Xenocrates of Chalcedon

37.

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

Samuel Johnson

38.

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

Bagehot, Walter

39.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

40.

Their silence is sufficient praise.

Terence

41.

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

John Tillotson

42.

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

Engel, Silvan

43.

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

44.

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

Ausonius

45.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread.

Blaise Pascal

46.

A man's silence is wonderful to listen to.

Thomas Hardy

47.

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