quotations about silence
There is a silence, the child of love, which expresses everything, and proclaims more loudly than the tongue is able to do; there are movements that are involuntary proofs of what the soul feels.
VITTORIO ALFIERI
attributed, Forty Thousand Quotations, Prose and Poetical
Behind the word is silence. Behind that silence is forgetfulness.
GIANNINA BRASCHI
Empire of Dreams
What barrier is so insurmountable as silence?
MARCEL PROUST
The Guermantes Way
There are haunters of the silence, ghosts that hold the heart and brain.
MADISON CAWEIN
Haunters of the Silence
Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
Silence is the only weapon by which such victims can conquer; it baffles the Cossack charges of envy, the savage skirmishings of suspicion; it does at times give victory, crushing and complete--for what is more complete than silence? it is absolute; it is one of the attributes of infinity.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Pierrette
Silence often enables us to see other people's imperfections, and helps us to conceal our own, but people with whom we associate might reasonably suspect us of emptiness if we indulge our inclination for silence on all occasions.
WALTER MATTHEWS
"Silence and Concentration", Human Life from Many Angles
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Sartor Resartus
Silence is the perfect expression of scorn.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Back to Methuselah
Silence is learned by the many misfortunes of life.
SENECA
Thyestes
In silence the heart raves. It utters words
Meaningless, that never had
A meaning.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
"True Love"
I decided it is better to scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.
NADEZHDA MANDELSTAM
Hope Against Hope
There are some things best contemplated in silence. Their proportions are so vast that speech cannot get around them.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Silence is the genius of fools and one of the virtues of the wise.
BERNARD DE BONNARD
attributed, Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
As we must account for every idle word, so we must for every idle silence.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1738
Empty afternoons of silence
Only the whirl of fans
Cutting through the air
SOCORRO PASCO
"Empty Afternoons of Silence", In the Silence of Dreaming and Selected Poems
Let us sculpt in hopeless silence all our dreams of speaking.
FERNANDO PESSOA
The Book of Disquiet
Silence! Oh, well are Death and Sleep and Thou
Three brethren named, the guardians gloomy-winged,
Of one abyss, where life and truth and joy
Are swallowed up.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
fragment, Notebook 6
Silence is sometimes more significant and sublime than the most noble and most expressive eloquence, and is on many occasions the indication of a great mind.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Tatler, February 14, 1709
There are so many things in life that we ought to be silent about. Nearly always they are unpleasant. Our silence tends to minimize them, often to destroy them altogether. By speaking of them, we give them renewed life and activity. If every one of us could only take the unpleasant as it enters consciousness and let it perish there, what a burden would be lifted off the world.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Silence", Reactions and Other Essays