Quotes About Silence

German people, he said, would follow Hitler with absolute loyalty "provided they are allowed to have a share in the making and carrying out of decisions, provided every word of criticism is not immediately interpreted as malicious, and provided that despairing patriots are not branded as traitors." The time had come, he proclaimed, "to silence doctrinaire fanatics.

It was as if a load had suddenly been lifted from the German soul. The sense of relief could almost be felt in the air. Papen had put into words what thousands upon thousands of his countrymen had locked up in their hearts for fear of the awful penalties of speech.

In Minneapolis there had been only silence and the inevitable clumsy petitions of potato-fingered men looking for someone, anyone, to share the agony of their days. That

sounds that sleeping houses make

After a few minutes, Churchill broke the silence, saying, "Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few." The remark had such power that Ismay quoted it to his wife after returning home. He had no idea that Churchill would soon deploy the line in one of his most famous speeches.

There are some things I must try to say before the still watches come again in which the things unsaid hurt so and cry out in the heart to be uttered.

Oh tais-toi mon coeur." ("Be quiet, my heart.")

Silence ensures that history repeats itself.

When she quieted the jet engine buzz of worries assaulting her brain, when she stopped thinking altogether and just felt, she knew this was right. Feeling the silence of peace and conviction was so foreign to her she wasn't even sure what to do with it.

I love my mother for all the times she said absolutely nothing.... Thinking back on it all, it must have been the most difficult part of mothering she ever had to do: knowing the outcome, yet feeling she had no right to keep me from charting my own path. I thank her for all her virtues, but mostly for never once having said, I told you so.

So we might say that pregnant silence is at the same time the most facile, as well as one of the highest, esthetic achievements.

And here we are in the closing decades of the 20th century, choking on truth. There has been so much brilliant writing, so many genial discoveries, so vast an extension and elaboration of these discoveries—yet the mind is silent as the world spins on its age-old demonic career.

There is a time to silence an adversary with the honey of logical persuasion, and there is a time to silence him with the argument of a heavily directed club.

Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?

A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.

Show the readers everything, tell them nothing.

Never, never tell them. Try and remember that. Never tell anyone anything ever. Never tell anyone anything again.

So this was how you died, in whispers that you did not hear.

I do not need to get used to your silence. I already know it. I quite possibly love all of it.

World War I was the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that has ever taken place on earth. Any writer who said otherwise lied, So the writers either wrote propaganda, shut up, or fought.

Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.

It was considered a virtue not to talk unnecessarily at sea...

Let's not talk about how I am. It's a subject I know too much about to want to think about anymore.

I thought you weren't going to ever talk about it. How can I help it? You'll lose it if you talk about it. I just talk around it. You know I feel rather damned good, Jake. You should. You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch. Yes. It's sort of what we have instead of God. Some people have God, I said. Quite a lot. He never worked very well with me. Should we have another Martini?