Quotes About Silence

Thomas More was widely regarded as a man of impeccable character and meticulous honesty. People trusted his judgment, and his refusal to sign sent a message to the people of England. He didn't speak out against the acts; he simply refused to sign or say anything at all. But one honest man's silence is louder than all the words of ten thousand dishonest men.

I continue to believe that we can learn more in an hour of silence than we can in a year from books.

True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment. – William Penn –

Clarity emerges from silence, not meetings. You need the silence so you have something worth saying in the meetings.

La felicidad es en gran medida como la riqueza y la sabiduría: aquellos que la poseen generalmente no necesitan hablar de ella, y aquellos que constantemente están hablando de ella generalmente no la poseen.

Darkness is a kind of visual silence, and monks love it.

Then we lapse into silence. It's these silences that do damage, that reveal glimpses of the distressed foundation struggling under the weight of things.

Married silence is a specific kind of silence, typically one in which the woman goes mute while the man pretends as if it's perfectly normal that she hasn't spoken in hours.

The sayers do not know and the knowers do not say.

Forbear to mention what thou canst not praise.

They always talk who never think.

They talk most who have the least to say.

Mute though his lips be, yet they still speak. Hushed is his voice, but its echoes of liberty are ringing through the world, and the sons of bondage listen with joy.

Diplomacy is the art of knowing what not to say.

In silence the three of them looked at the sunset and thought about God.

The silence in the room had width, height, depth, mass and substance.

Somehow, by holding hands you can carry on a conversation without talking.

Writing is not destined to leave traces, but to erase, by traces, all traces, to disappear in the fragmentary space of writing more definitely than one disappears in the tomb.

To write is, moreover, to withdraw language from the world, to detach it from what makes it a power according to which, when I speak, it is the world that declares itself, the clear light of day that develops through tasks undertaken, through action and time.

One thing must be understood : I have said nothing extraordinary or even surprising. What is extraordinary begins at the moment I stop. But I am no longer able to speak of it.

They who were so important, who wanted to create the world, are dumbfounded; everything crumbles.

To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking - and since it cannot, in order to become its echo I have, in a way, to silence it. I bring to this incessant speech the decisiveness, the authority of my own silence.

Where he is, only being speaks—which means that language doesn't speak any more, but is.

On eût dit qu'en parlant un langage dont le caractère enfantin ne permettait pas qu'on le tînt pour un langage, elle donnait aux mots insignifiants l'aspect de mots incompréhensibles. Elle ne disait rien, mais ne rien dire était pour elle un mode d'expression trop significatif, au-dessous duquel elle réussissait à moins dire encore.