380 Silence Quotes

It is thus quite simply false that whereof one cannot speak (in the sense of 'there is nothing to say about it that specifies it and grants it separating properties'), thereof one must be silent. It must on the contrary be named.

Going to where the silence is. That is the responsibility of a journalist: giving a voice to those who have been forgotten, forsaken, and beaten down by the powerful.

Oh why do we not say the important things, it would be so easy, and we are damned because we do not.

People knew about Babi Yar before Yevtushenko's poem, but they were silent. And when they read the poem, the silence was broken. Art destroys silence.

Tall windows show Infinity; And, hard reality, The candles weep and pry and dance Like lives mocked at by Chance. The rooms are vast as Sleep within; When once I ventured in, Chill Silence, like a surging sea, Slowly enveloped me.

An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.

Never explain - your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.

Individuals bearing witness cannot do the work of social movements, but they can break a corrosive and demoralizing silence.

What do you tell a man with two black eyes? Nothing, he's already been told twice.

True penitence condemns to silence. What a man is ready to recall he would be willing to repeat.

The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.

I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed.

I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.

All Profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence.

My words in her mind: cold polished stones sinking through a quagmire.

They are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak; They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think; They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three.

He who seldom speaks, and with one calm well-timed word can strike dumb the loquacious, is a genius or a hero.

The oracles are dumb, No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

I would tell you more of Him, but how shall I? When love becomes vast love becomes wordless. And when memory is overladen it seeks the silent deep.

It ain't a bad plan to keep still occasionally even when you know what you're talking about.

I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak.

A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.

The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint.

In order to remain silent Da-sein must have something to say.

Creep into thy narrow bed, Creep, and let no more be said!

No love can survive muteness.

Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer.

Conversation like television set on honeymoon... unnecessary.

A good deed hidden in silence dies.

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

Man goes into the noisy crowd to drown his own clamour of silence.

Montag, you're looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going, a long time back. I said nothing. I'm 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.

And once again I am I will not say alone, no, that's not like me, but, how shall I say, I don't know, restored to myself, no, I never left myself, free, yes, I don't know what that means but it's the word I mean to use, free to do what, to do nothing, to know, but what, the laws of the mind perhaps, of my mind, that for example water rises in proportion as it drowns you and that you would do better, at least no worse, to obliterate texts than to blacken margins, to fill in the holes of words till all is blank and flat and the whole ghastly business looks like what is, senseless, speechless, issueless misery.

A Frenchman must be always talking, whether he knows anything of the matter or not; an Englishman is content to say nothing, when he has nothing to say.

If sometimes you can't hear me, it's because I'm in parentheses.

The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird.

My Soul. Such fullness in that quarter overflows And falls into the basin of the mind That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind, For intellect no longer knows Is from the Ought, or knower from the Known - That is to say, ascends to Heaven; Only the dead can be forgiven; But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.

Love had he found in huts where poor men lie; His daily teachers had been woods and rills, The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills.

For the gods approve The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul.

Ballet for a rainy day Silent film of melting miracle play Dancing out there through my window To the backdrop of a slow descending grey

Don't soil your pretty little shoes The gutter's deep and red Climb up climb up and ride along with me the tumbrel driver said But she never said a word never turned her head Don't soil your pretty little pants I only go one way Climb up climb up and ride along with me There's no gold coach today But she never said a word never turned her head

all which isn't singing is mere talking : and all talking's to oneself alone but the very song of(as mountains feel and lovers)singing is silence

The most important thing in music is what is not in the notes

These be Three silent things: The falling snow...the hour Before the dawn...the mouth of one Just dead.

The disciples were absorbed in a discussion of Lao-tzu's dictum: Those who know do not say;Those who say do not know. When the master entered, they asked him what the words meant. Said the master, 'Which of you knows the fragrance of a rose?' All of them indicated that they knew. Then he said, 'put it into words.' All of them were silent.

Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star... [from 'being to timelessness as it's to time,' published 1958]

The no-mind not-thinks no thoughts about no things.

In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist; And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist; And then they came for the Jews, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew; And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.

Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep, Where the winds are all asleep.

I shall assume that your silence gives consent (XLI).

It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say.

Never seek to tell thy love Love that never told can be; For the gentle wind does move Silently, invisibly. I told my love, I told my love, I told her all my heart; Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears- Ah, she doth depart. Soon as she was gone from me A traveler came by Silently, invisibly- Oh, was no deny.

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.

'At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.' 1958

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - The Stillness in the Room Was like the Stillness in the Air - Between the Heaves of Storm -

We do not stray out of all words into the ever silent; We do not raise our hands to the void for things beyond hope. ~ 16

Hamm: Look at the ocean! (Clov gets down, takes a few steps towards window left, goes back for ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window left, gets up on it, turns the telescope on the without, looks at length. He starts, lowers the telescope, examines it, turns it again on the without.) Clov: Never seen anything like that! Hamm (anxious): What? A sail? A fin? Smoke? Clov (looking): The light is sunk. Hamm (relieved): Pah! We all knew that. Clov (looking): There was a bit left. Hamm: The base. Clov (looking): Yes. Hamm: And now? Clov (looking): All gone. Hamm: No gulls? Clov (looking): Gulls! Hamm: And the horizon? Nothing on the horizon? Clov (lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, exasperated): What in God's name could there be on the horizon? (Pause.) Hamm: The waves, how are the waves? Clov: The waves? (He turns the telescope on the waves.) Lead. Hamm: And the sun? Clov (looking): Zero. Hamm: But it should be sinking. Look again. Clov (looking): Damn the sun. Hamm: Is it night already then? Clov (looking): No. Hamm: Then what is it? Clov (looking): Gray. (Lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, louder.) Gray! (Pause. Still louder.) GRRAY! (Pause. He gets down, approaches Hamm from behind, whispers in his ear.) Hamm (starting): Gray! Did I hear you say gray? Clov: Light black. From pole to pole.

It is better to stay silent and let people think you are an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

Le silence est la plus grande persecution; jamais les saints ne se sont tus. (919)

'Do you remember how, all year long, the only thing Rock wanted to do in your class was make pancakes?' 'You still like to cook? Still like to bake bread? And you know your rolls, right?' 'The Rock says this. You should know your role, and shut your mouth; take a little walk down Know Your Role Boulevard, hang that right on Jabroni Drive, and check your Aunt Jemima, no-pancake-having ass directly into the Smackdown Hotel!'

Hello darkness, my old friend I've come to talk with you again Because a vision softly creeping Left its seeds while I was sleeping And the vision that was planted in my brain Still remains Within the sound of silence.

And the people bowed and prayed To the neon god they made And the sign flashed out its warning In the words that it was forming And the sign said 'The words of the prophets Are written on the subway walls And tenement halls And whispered in the sound of silence'

If there must be a god in the house, must be, Saying things in the room and on the stair, Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor, Or moonlight, silently, as Plato's ghost Or Aristotle's skeleton. Let him hang out His stars on the wall. He must dwell quietly. He must be incapable of speaking, closed, As those are: as light, for all its motion, is; As color, even the closest to us, is; As shapes, though they portend us, are. It is the human that is the alien, The human that has no cousin in the moon. It is the human that demands his speech From beasts or from the incommunicable mass. If there must be a god in the house, let him be one That will not hear us when we speak: a coolness A vermillioned nothingness, any stick of the mass Of which we are too distantly a part.

Half a man's life is spent in implying, in turning away, and in keeping silent.

O mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. For now the noonday quiet holds the hill: The grasshopper is silent in the grass: The lizard, with his shadow on the stone, Rests like a shadow, and the winds are dead. The purple flower droops: the golden bee Is lily-cradled: I alone awake. My eyes are full of tears, my heart of love, My heart is breaking, and my eyes are dim, And I am all aweary of my life.

You, why do you let me say such things when and where I shouldn't?' 'the problem is not ordering the course of your speech. Its shutting you up in the first place'

Good practical intelligence. Why screech when there is no one to comfort you?

In some causes silence is dangerous; so if any know of conspiracies against their country or king, or any that might greatly prejudice their neighbor, they ought to discover it.

First silence. Then denial. Then support of the insupportable. Then vilification of the dissenters. The pattern is as old as time.

I stuffed their mouths with gold.

Well... the less said about 'him,' the better.

Finns can be silent in several languages.

Prudence: 'Speak rarely, but then speak carefully. Speak with great calculation and discretion before your rivals and with great nobility of manner before friends. The opportunity to make your thoughts known arise with every social gathering, but the ability to conceal them once liberated never comes.'

Prudence: 'He who is silent must be agreed with, for what shall the wings of opposition thresh upon, without the winds of conversation to shoulder them.'

He was by his whole style and nature so much the most deeply 'silent' of the silent comedians that even a smile was as deafeningly out of key as a yell. In a way his pictures are like a transcendent juggling act in which it seems that the whole universe is in exquisite flying motion and the one point of repose is the juggler's effortless, uninterested face.

There are moments in many of his movies that are just poetic... In doing silent movies, no one had done this yet!

And the shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leaves Interlace with low voices and footsteps and sunlight To divide us forever.

'I am the one who stood beside you and smiled, Thinking your face so strangely young . . . ' 'I am the one who loved you but did not dare.'

'I bound her to me in all soft ways, I bound her to me in a net of days, Yet now she has gone in silence and said no word. How can we face these dazzling things, I ask you? There is no use: we cry: and are not heard.

In one room, silently, lover looks upon lover, And thinks the air is fire.

Interviewer: Has Davey's monster in his neck surfaced recently? And what's his name? Davey: He doesn't have a name. He's gone. Forever. Interviewer: Would you care to elaborate as to what the monster in the neck actually was? Davey: It's just gone. Yeah it's just gone. It's gone. Interviewer: I'm getting the distinct impression that you really don't want to talk about the monster in your neck. Davey: Yeah.

And when I get excited My little China Girl says 'Oh baby just you shut your mouth'.

Delivered out of raw continual pain, smell of darkness, groans of those others to whom he was chained - unchained, and led past the sleepers, door after door silently opening - out!

they flock and they flee through the thunder of seem though the stars in their silence say Be.

Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld! Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night! I feel ye now - I feel ye in your strength.

Hush, call no echo up in further proof Of desolation! there's a voice within That weeps . . . as thou must sing . . . alone, aloof.

As far as I remember, he was there two, three, or four times. At any rate, during the last months of the war I saw him two, three, or four times. Kaltenbrunner never said a word there. As far as I remember, he just listened and stood about.

Dialogue with Italian general Barbasetti at Capuzzo. Barbassetti: 'it was very painful the sacrifice of the X Army Corps abandoned in the desert'; Rommel: 'is this a critic? no disapproval words have come from the Fuhrer'; Barbassetti: 'I watched the endless column of retreating companies, German drivers rejected to pick up on their trucks the Italians'. After these words Rommel silenced.

'Steam engines don't answer back. You can belt them with a hammer and they say nowt.'

'Det finns ingenting som inte hant, men mycket som inte berattats.'