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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"Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much. Lady, as you are mine, I am yours: I give away myself for you and dote upon the exchange."
"Be checked for silence, But never taxed for speech."
"Silence is only commendable In a neat's tongue dried, and a maid not vendible."
"Love all, trust a few, Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy Rather in power than use; and keep thy friend Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence, But never tax'd for speech."
"The after-silence, when the feast is o'er,And void the places where the minstrels stood,Differs in nought from what hath been before,And is nor ill nor good."
"Spires whose "silent finger points to heaven.""
"But let me have silence always, in the centre of the shouting—that is essential! Let me have silence so that no pin may drop and not be heard, and not a whisper escape us for all our spouting, nor the needle's scratching upon this gramophone of a circular cosmic spot. Hear me! Mark me! Learn me! Throw the mind's ear open—shut up the mind's eye—all will be music!"
"Books are menaced by books. Any excess of information produces silence."
"I should have said something. ... But my mouth wouldn't open, and the longer I stood there in silence, the better I can to understand the problem. It wasn't that I had nothing to say to him. It was that I had too much to say."
"Instead I just let the silence stretch out between us. It's the only adequate response to what he just told me, the only that does the tragedy any justice instead of patching it hastily and moving on."
"He pulls me over the railing and against his chest, gathering me into his arms, easing an arm under my knees. I press my face into his shoulder, and there is a sudden, hollow silence."
"At first Eric stares at Four in silence. Four stares back."
"The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a moment’s silence, "Perhaps more so."
"We say and exclaim within ourselves without breaking silence, in a tumult where everything speaks except our mouths. The realities of the soul are none the less real for being invisible and impalpable."
"The path of things is silent. Will they suffer a speaker to go with them?"
"Speech is better than silence; silence is better than speech."
"The eloquence of one stimulates all the rest, some up to the speaking-point, and all others to a degree that makes them good receivers and conductors, and they avenge themselves for their enforced silence by increased loquacity on their return."
"Good as is discourse, silence is better, and shames it. The length of the discourse indicates the distance of thought betwixt the speaker and the hearer. If they were at a perfect understanding in any part, no words would be necessary thereon. If at one in all parts, no words would be suffered."
"Good as is discourse, silence is better and shames it."
"Beside all the small reasons we assign, there is a great reason for the existence of every extant fact; a reason which lies grandand immovable, often unsuspected behind it in silence."
