Selected silence quotes

1. Silence sweeter is than speech.

2. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

3. And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. I waited and waited, and when no message came, I knew it must have been from you.

7. If you have something to say and say nothing, you are really telling a lie.

8. One good thing about my computer: it never asks why.

9. Calumnies are answered best with silence.

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

11. 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.

12. My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.

13. 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.

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

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

16. I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

25. 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.

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

27. 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.

28. 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

35. No love can survive muteness.

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

37. Conversation like television set on honeymoon... unnecessary.

38. A good deed hidden in silence dies.

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

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

41. In secret we met In silence I grieve, That thy heart could forget, Thy spirit deceive. If I should meet thee After long years, How should I greet thee? With silence and tears.

42. Speak only if it improves upon the silence.

43. Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.

44. Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.

45. Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask - Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge.

46. 'Don't play what's there, play what's not there.'

47. 'Your voice will come. We all go through the same thing. You cannot talk when you first arrive.' He smiled. 'It helps you listen.'

48. She believed that people revealed themselves most when they were vaguely anxious, and few things brought out nonspecific anxieties like being in the presence of a person who never speaks.

49. Yes, in my life, since we must call it so, there were three things, the inability to speak, the inability to be silent, and solitude, that's what I've had to make the best of.

50. No voice; but oh! the silence sank Like music on my heart.

51. 'Players have two things to do. Play and keep their mouths shut.'

52. Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.

53. As the Swiss inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden- 'Speech is silvern, Silence is golden'; or, as I might rather express it: speech is of time, silence is of eternity.

54. I saw old Autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like Silence, listening To silence.

55. Like a long-legged fly upon the stream His mind moves upon silence.

56. Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!

57. Silence sweeter is than speech.

58. The beating of my own heart Was all the sound I heard.

59. I wandered by the brookside, I wandered by the mill; I could not hear the brook flow, The noisy wheel was still.

60. Why to mute fish should'st thou thyself discover And not to me, they no less silent lover?

61. Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you. And you know I can do it; I saw Indians smash my dear parents' heads on the pillow next to mine, and I have seen some reddish work done at night, and I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down!

62. Silence more musical than any song.

63. Know your role and shut your mouth!

64. Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that of course they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.

65. Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare. Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves, the while they stare At nothing.

66. Creation sleeps! 'Tis as the general pulse Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause; An awful pause! prophetic of her end.

67. He who doesn't understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

68. Let silence be your general rule; or say only what is necessary and in few words. We shall, however, when occasion demands, enter into discourse sparingly, avoiding such common topics as gladiators, horse-races, athletes; and the perpetual talk about food and drink. Above all avoid speaking of persons, either in the way of praise or blame, or comparison. If you can, win over the conversation of your company to what it should be by your own. But if you should find yourself cut off without escape among strangers and aliens, be silent. (164)

69. Silence is the virtue of a fool.

70. Silence is the perfect expression of scorn.

71. Silence is the general consecration of the universe. Silence is the invisible laying on of the Divine Pontiff's hands upon the world. Silence is at once the most harmless and the most awful thing in all nature. It speaks of the Reserved Forces of Fate. Silence is the only Voice of our God.

72. Silence is difficult and arduous, it is not to be played with. It isn't something that you can experience by reading a book, or by listening to a talk, or by sitting together, or by retiring into a wood or a monastery. I am afraid none of these things will bring about this silence. This silence demands intense psychological work. You have to be burningly aware of your snobbishness, aware of your fears, your anxieties, your sense of guilt. And when you die to all that, then out of that dying comes the beauty of silence. (London, 1962).

73. Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy!

74. If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. (p. 23)

75. You'll never know that you had all of me. You'll never know the poetry you've stirred in me. Of all the stars I've seen that shine so brightly, I've never known or felt in myself so rightly, It's in me...

76. 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. I would not have thee believe in what I say nor trust in what I do - for my words are naught but thy own thoughts in sound and my deeds thy own hopes in action.

77. There is so much silence between the words, you say. You say, The sensed absence of God and the sensed presence amount to much the same thing, only in reverse. You say, I have too much white clothing. You start to hum. Several hundred years ago this could have been mysticism or heresy. It isn't now. Outside there are sirens. Someone's been run over. The century grinds on.

78. First the Nazis came: First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out- because I was not a communist; Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out- because I was not a socialist; Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out- because I was not a trade unionist; Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out- because I was not a Jew; Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak out for me.

79. I no longer tell anyone half of what I know, because if I told the whole truth there would be fear, hatred, brutality, murder, war.

80. I am so afraid of people's words. They describe so distinctly everything: And this they call dog and that they call house, here the start and there the end. I worry about their mockery with words, they know everything, what will be, what was; no mountain is still miraculous; and their house and yard lead right up to God. I want to warn and object: Let the things be! I enjoy listening to the sound they are making. But you always touch: and they hush and stand still. That's how you kill.

81. 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.

82. 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.

83. 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.

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

85. 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.

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

87. 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.

88. 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.

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

90. 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

91. 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

92. 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

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

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

95. 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.

96. 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]

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

98. 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.

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

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