Quotes About Silence

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood

Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.

Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.

There are many fine things we cannot say if we have to shout.

The stars are God's dreams, thoughts remembered in the silence of his night.

The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks.

The silence rings—it is musical & thrills me. A night in which the silence was audible—I hear the unspeakable.

How shall I help myself? By withdrawing into the garret, and associating with spiders and mice, determining to meet myself face to face sooner or later. Completely silent and attentive I will be this hour, and the next, and forever.

My Muse may be excused if she is silent henceforth. How can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut down?

Instead of singing, like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so I had my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask.

One who has just come from reading perhaps one of the best English books will find how many with whom he can converse about it? Or suppose he comes from reading a Greek or Latin classic in the original, whose praises are familiar even to the so-called illiterate; he will find nobody at all to speak to, but must keep silence about it.

I am surprised that we make no more ado about echoes. They are almost the only kindred voices that I hear.

Perhaps this was the first instance of that quiet way of speaking for a place not yet occupied, or at least not improved as much as it may be, which their descendants have practised, and are still practising so extensively. Not Any seems to have been the sole proprietor of all America before the Yankees [...] At any rate, I know that if you hold a thing unjustly, there will surely be the devil to pay at last.

There was such a repose and quiet here at this hour, as if the very hill-sides were enjoying the scene, and as we passed slowly along, looking back over the country we had traversed, and listening to the evening song of the robin, we could not help contrasting the equanimity of nature with the bustle and impatience of man. His words and actions presume always a crises near at hand, but she is forever silent and unpretending." - A Walk to Wachusett

the poem of the world is uninterrupted, but few are the ears that hear it.

I want a whole continent to breathe in, and a good deal of solitude and silence, such as all Wall Street cannot buy, — nor Broadway with its wooden pavement. I must live along the beach, on the southern shore, which looks directly out to sea, — and see what that great parade of water means, that dashes and roars, and has not yet wet me, as long as I have lived.

Mi vida fue el poema que habría escrito, pero no podía vivirlo y pronunciarlo

Happiness writes white.

She gazed and wondered, like a child or peasant, and paid her silent tribute to visible grandeur.

He himself was almost never bored, and there was no man with whom it would have been a greater mistake to suppose that silence meant displeasure.

She knew that this silent, motionless portal opened into the street; if the sidelights had not been filled with green paper, she might have looked out on the little brown stoop and the well-worn brick pavement. But she had no wish to look out, for this would have interfered with her theory that there was a strange, unseen place on the other side--a place which became, to the child's imagination, according to its different moods, a region of delight or terror.