Silence quotes
2.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside silence — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought. . . . life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence."
"I have no message to give the politicians of the world. They're all completely addicted to promiscuous verbalization and I'm quite sure they would not be at all interested in hearing about cut-ups and hieroglyphics and still less interested to hear about silence."
"Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness."
"If you rest in the silence inside, all those you meet will have their spiritual hearts resuscitated."
"When one remains without thinking one understands another by means of the universal language of Silence."
"You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not - silence is the sharper sword."
"To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage."
"Silence is more eloquent than words."
"In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: here therefore, by silence and by speech acting together, comes a double significance. In the symbol proper, what we can call a symbol, there is ever, more or less distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite; the Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and as it were, attainable there. By symbols, accordingly, is man guided and commanded, made happy, made wretched."
"Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together."
"Speech is great, but silence is greater."
"It is in deep solitude and silence that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brother and sister."
"All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says."
"The landscapist lives in silence."
"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."
"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing."
"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."
"Literature takes a habit of mind that has disappeared. It requires silence, some form of isolation, and sustained concentration in the presence of an enigmatic thing."
"I like better for one to say some foolish thing upon important matters than to be silent. That becomes the subject of discussion and dispute, and the truth is discovered."
"Silence. All human unhappiness comes from not knowing how to stay quietly in a room."
