Quotations and Poems

» “From politics it was an easy step to silence.”
– Jane Austen

»  ”Silence is the virtue of fools.”
– Francis Bacon

»  ”An inability to stay quiet is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind.”
– Walter Bagehot

»  ”It is more noble by silence to avoid an injury than by argument to overcome it.”
– Francis Beaumont

»  ”I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.”
– Samuel Beckett

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

»  ”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

»  ”Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.”
– Josh Billings

»  ”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.”
– Jacob Boehme

»  ”There are times when silence has the loudest voice.”
– Leroy Brownlow

»  ”Learn taciturnity and let that be your motto!”
– Robert Burns

»  ”Silence is more eloquent than words.”
– Thomas Carlyle

»  ”When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.”
– Thomas Carlyle

»  ”Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.”
– Thomas Carlyle

»  ”Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves.”
– Thomas Carlyle

»  ”Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.”
– Thomas Carlyle

»  ”Speech is of time, silence is of eternity.”
– Thomas Carlyle

»  ”I think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to gods who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right.”
– Cato The Elder

»  ”Silence is the unbearable repartee.”
– Gilbert K. Chesterton

»  ”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.”
– Deepak Chopra

»  ”When the eagles are silent the parrots begin to jabber.”
– Winston Churchill

»  ”Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.”
– Marcus T. Cicero

»  ”Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish.”
– Charles Caleb Colton

»  ”Silence is the true friend that never betrays.”
– Confucius

»  ”If you don’t say anything, you won’t be called on to repeat it.”
– Calvin Coolidge

»  ”These be three silent things: The Falling snow… the hour before the dawn… the mouth of one just dead.”
– Adelaide Crapsey

»  ”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.”
– Charles Delint

»  ”X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.”
– R A Dickson

»  ”Silence is the mother of truth.”
– Benjamin Disraeli

»  ”When little is done, little is said; silence is the mother of truth.”
– Benjamin Disraeli

»  ”Not to ask is not be denied.”
– John Dryden

»  ”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.”
– George Eliot

»  ”Let us be silent that we may hear the whispers of the gods.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

»  ”It is better to be silent, and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.”
– Silvan Engel

»  ”I am better able to retract what I did not say than what I did.”
– Ibn Gabirol

»  ”Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.”
– Charles De Gaulle

»  ”Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.”
– Kahlil Gibran

»  ”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.”
– Henry Giles

»  ”Silence is argument carried on by other means.”
– Che Guevara

»  ”That man’s silence is wonderful to listen to.”
– Thomas Hardy

»  ”Well-timed silence is the most commanding expression.”
– Mark Helprin

»  ”Touch not the flute when drums are sounding around; when fools have the word, the wise will be silent.”
– Johann Gottfried Von Herder

»  ”And Silence, like a poultice, comes to heal the blows of sound.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes

»  ”The man who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.”
– Elbert Hubbard

»  ”It ain’t a bad plan to keep still occasionally even when you know what you’re talking about.”
– Kin Hubbard

»  ”Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unshown marble of great sculpture. The silent bear no witness against themselves.”
– Aldous Huxley

»  ”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.”
– Ivan Illich

»  ”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.”
– St. John of the Cross

»  ”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.”
– Jonathan Katz

»  ”The unspoken word never does harm.”
– Lajos Kossuth

»  ”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.”
– Elisabeth K