Silence Quotes

Gray hairs are signs of wisdom if you hold your tongue, speak and they are but hairs, as in the young.

But learn this custom from the flower: silence your tongue.

The unsaid part is the best of every discourse.

Silence is true wisdom's best reply.

I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. A thoughtless word hardly ever escaped my tongue or pen. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. We find so many people impatient to talk. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.

Those who know do not talk. Those who talk do not know.

Silenceis an ocean. Speech is a river.When the ocean is searching for you, don't walkinto the language-river. Listen to the ocean,and bring your talky business to an end.Traditional words are just babblingin that presence, and babbling is a substitutefor sight.

For both parties in a controversy, the most disagreeable way of retaliating is to be vexed and silent; for the aggressor usually regards the silence as a sign of contempt.

Wise men, when in doubt whether to speak or to keep quiet, give themselves the benefit of the doubt, and remain silent.

I have only one friend, and that is echo. Why is it my friend? Because I love my sorrow, and echo does not take it away from me. I have only one confidant, and that is the silence of night. Why is it my confidant? Because it remains silent.

When you have nothing important or interesting to say, don't let anyone persuade you to say it.

The jungle looked back at them with a vastness, a breathing moss-and-leaf silence, with a billion diamond and emerald insect eyes.

It is not so easy to keep silent when the silence is a lie.

Other sound than the owl's voice there was none, save the falling of a fountain into its stone basin; for, it was one of those dark nights that hold their breath by the hour together, and then heave a long low sigh, and hold their breath again.

Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence... someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence, certainly never.

Am I a harp that the hand of the mighty may touch me, or a flute that his breath may pass through me? A seeker of silences am I, and what treasure have I found in silences that I may dispense with confidence?

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

There is no shame in confusion or fear. "There was only shame in the silence fear had produced. . . . It was the silence that betrayed us."

When I was 8 years old I became a mute and was a mute until I was 13, and I thought of my whole body as an ear, so I can go into a crowd and sit still and absorb all sound. That talent or ability has lasted and served me until today.

The silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails.

The rest, is silence.

I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.

All is known in the sacredness of silence.

If with love thy heart has burned;If thy love is unreturned;Hide thy grief within thy breast,Though it tear thee unexpressed.

My friend, I am not what I seem. Seeming is but a garment I wear — a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence. The "I" in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable.

The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.

Then at night the general stillness is more impressive than any sound, but occasionally you hear the note of an owl farther or nearer in the woods, and if near a lake, the semihuman cry of the loons at their unearthly revels.

To be slow in words is a woman's only virtue.

The best kind of friend is the kind you sit with, never say a word and walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you ever had.

Mr. Montag, you are looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going a long time back. I said nothing. I am one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the 'guilty,' but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself.

I spent a long time looking at faces, drinking in smiles. Am I happy or unhappy? It’s not a very important question. I live with such frenzied intensity. Things and people are waiting for me, and doubtless I am waiting for them and desiring them with all my strength and sadness. But, here, I earn the right to be alive by silence and by secrecy. The miracle of not having to talk about oneself.

The less said the better.

Silence is the greatest persecution; never do the saints keep themselves silent.

Of course, you can’t force your mind to be silent. That would be like trying to smooth ripples in water with a flatiron. Water becomes clear and calm only when left alone.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

Dumb as a drum vith a hole in it, sir.

The silence of the envious is too noisy.

Sadness to me is the happiest time, When a shining city rises from the ruins of my drunken mind. Those times when I'm silent and still as the earth, The thunder of my roar is heard across the universe.

The moment you become aware of the silence, you also have become silent.

Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river. When the ocean is searching for you, don't walk into the river. Listen to the ocean.

when one never speaks, one has nothing to say because one has too much to say.

Spiteful words can hurt your feelings but silence breaks your heart.

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.

He who talks more is sooner exhausted.

They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today-my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die

I believe in the discipline of silence, and could talk for hours about it.

Silence - Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

Silence gives answers.

The unspoken word is capital. We can invest it or we can squander it.

they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.

No more words. In the name of this place we drink in with our breathing, stay quiet like a flower. So the nightbirds will start singing.

I keep my mouth shut now. I've turned into a professional coward.

Mrs Dalloway is always giving parties to cover the silence

Solitude is for me a fount of healing which makes my life worth living. Talking is often a torment for me, and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words.

I need silence, and to be alone and to go out, and to save one hour to consider what has happened to my world, what death has done to my world.

Wilson stopped and stood silent. Inattention dies a quick and sure death when a speaker does that.

In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word.

One word from you shall silence me forever.

The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I should reply, 'Create silence'.