"The pause - that impressive silence, that..." - Quote by Mark Twain
The pause - that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, howsoever felicitous, could accomplish it.
More by Mark Twain
“The frankest and freest product of the human mind and heart is a love letter; the writer gets his limitless freedom of statement and expression from his sense that no stranger is going to see what he is writing.”
“Every man is in his own person the whole human race without a detail lacking....I knew I should not find in any philosophy a single thought which had not passed through my own head, nor a single thought which had not passed through the heads of millions and millions of men before I was born.”
“Good judgement is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgement.”
More on Communication
“One thing which makes us find so few people who appear reasonable and agreeable in conversation is, that there is scarcely any one who does not think more of what he is about to say than of answering precisely what is said to him.”
“I begin to long for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on pavement.”
“One can only continue to expect to be read if one omits everything that is unimportant.”
More on Silence
“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts; And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime. And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.”
“I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams.”
“If you want others to have a good opinion of you, say nothing.”