Silence
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Napoli, chiostro di Santa Chiara: allegoria del Silenzio
Quotes about Silence.
Quotes
There are times when silence is the best way to yell at the top of your voice.
O. A. Battista, from Braude's Second Encyclopedia of stories, quotations, and anecdotes.
Behind the word is silence. Behind that silence is forgetfulness.
Giannina Braschi, "Empire of Dreams," Part I, "Assault on Time".
All Heaven and Earth are still, though not in sleep,
But breathless, as we grow when feeling most.
Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto III (1816), Stanza 89.
Speech is of time, silence is of eternity.
Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834), Book III, chapter 3.
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule.
Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834), Book III, chapter 3.
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.
Thomas Carlyle, Sir Walter Scott (1838).
Silence is more eloquent than words.
Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero Worship (1840), Lecture II.
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
Max Ehrmann, "Desiderata" (1927).
Silence best speaks the mind.
Phineas Fletcher, Piscatorie Eclogues (1633), V, st. 13.
Take heed of still waters, they quick pass away.
George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum (1651).
Silence, according to western and eastern tradition alike, is necessary for the emergence of persons. It is taken from us by machines that ape people. We could easily be made increasingly dependent on machines for speaking and for thinking, as we are already dependent on machines for moving.
Ivan Illich, "Silence is a Commons" (1982), as published in The CoEvolution Quarterly, Winter 1983.
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on
John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn.
There are grammatical errors even in his silence.
Stanisław Jerzy Lec, Unkempt Thoughts.
Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline (1847), Part II, Section 1
The surest pledge of a deathless name
Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Herons of Elmwood", in Kéramos and Other Poems (1878).
* You know
There are moments when silence, prolong'd and unbroken,
More expressive may be than all words ever spoken,
It is when the heart has an instinct of what
In the heart of another is passing.
Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Lucile (1860), Part II, Canto I, Stanza 20.
... There's a joy,
To the fond votaries of fame unknown,
To hear the still small voice of conscience speak
In whisp'ring plaudit to the silent soul.
Hannah More, David and Goliath, Part I
Be check'd for silence,
But never tax'd for speech.
William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well (1600s), Act I, scene 1, line 76.
I'll speak to thee in silence.
William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), Act V, scene 4, line 29.
The rest is silence.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act V, scene 2, line 368.
The saying is true "The empty vessel makes the greatest sound."
William Shakespeare, Henry V (c. 1599), Act IV, scene 4, line 72.
Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep.
William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part II (c. 1590-91), Act III, scene 1, line 58.
Silence is only commendable
In a neat's tongue dried and a maid not vendible.
William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act I, scene 1, line 111.
'Tis old, but true, still swine eat all the draff.
William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1597; published 1602), Act IV, scene 2, line 96.
Silence is the perfectest herald of joy:
I were but little happy, if I could say how much.
William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99), Act II, scene 1, line 317.
What; gone without a word?
Ay, so true love should do: it cannot speak;
For truth hath better deeds than words to grace it.
William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1590s), Act II, scene 2, line 16.
There was speech in their dumbness, language in their very gesture.
William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610–11), Act V, scene 2, line 12.
But my words like silent raindrops fell, and echoed in the wells of silence.
Paul Simon, The Sound of Silence.
"Do not too hastily conclude that silence is indifference. Indifference is not to care, not to act, not even to think or breathe. Indifference is inhuman and inhumane. Silence, on the other hand, is almost always premeditated, a willful act. Without silence there would be no sound."
Justin Bryan Snider, a teacher, who posted this on his daily quotation board on October 17, 2006 at Li Po Chun United World College of Hong Kong
The things you do not have to say make you rich.
Saying the things you do not have to say weakens your talk.
Hearing the things you do not need to hear dulls your hearing.
And the things you know before you hear them, these are you, and this is why you are in the world.
William Stafford, Crossing Unmarked Snow.
Silence, beautiful voice.
Alfred Tennyson, Maud; A Monodrama (1855), Part V, Stanza 3.
Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.
Martin Farquhar Tupper, Proverbial Philosophy (1838-1842), "Of Discretion".
The best way to describe silence is to say nothing—but what grace!
Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun, Vol. III, Ch. 37: Terminus Est.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 707-10.
But silence never shows itself to so great an advantage, as when it is made the reply to calumny and defamation, provided that we give no just occasion for them.
Joseph Addison, The Tatler, No. 133.
Alta vendetta
D'alto silenzio è figlia.
Deep vengeance is the daughter of deep silence.
Vittorio Alfieri, La Congiura de' Pazzi, I, 1.
Qui tacet, consentire videtur.
Silence gives consent.
Pope Boniface VIII. Taken from the Canon Law, Decretals, Book V. 12. 43. Richard Fuller, Wise Sentences. Oliver Goldsmith, The Good-Natured Man, Act II.
Le silence est l'esprit das sots,
Et l'une des vertus du sage.
Silence is the genius of fools and one of the virtues of the wise.
Bernard de Bonnard.
Three things are ever silent—Thought, Destiny, and the Grave.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Harold, Book X, Chapter II.
There was silence deep as death;
And the boldest held his breath,
For a time.
Thomas Campbell, Battle of the Baltic.
Speech is great; but silence is greater.
Thomas Carlyle, Essays, Characteristics of Shakespeare.
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.
Thomas Carlyle, Essays, Memoir of the Life of Scott.
There are haunters of the silence, ghosts that hold the heart and brain.
Madison Cawein, Haunters of the Silence.
Cum tacent clamant.
When they hold their tongues they cry out.
Cicero, In Catilinam, 1. 8.
And they three passed over the white sands, between the rocks, silent as the shadows.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Wanderings of Cain.
Striving to tell his woes, words would not come;
For light cares speak, when mighty griefs are dumb.
Samuel Daniel, Complaint of Rosamond, Stanza 114.
Il ne voit que la nuit, n'entend que le silence.
He sees only night, and hears only silence.
Jacques Delille, Imagination, IV.
Silence is the mother of Truth.
Benjamin Disraeli, Tancred (1847), Book IV, Chapter IV.
A horrid stillness first invades the ear,
And in that silence we the tempest fear.
John Dryden, Astræa Redux, line 7.
Stillborn silence! thou that art
Flood-gate of the deeper heart!
Richard Fleckno, Silence.
Small griefs find tongues: full casques are ever found
To give, if any, yet but little sound.
Deep waters noyselesse are; and this we know,
That chiding streams betray small depth below.
Robert Herrick, Hesperides, To His Mistresse Objecting to Him Neither Toying or Talking.
And silence, like a poultice, comes
To heal the blows of sound.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Music Grinder.
There is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,
In the cold grave—under the deep, deep sea,
Or in wide desert where no life is found,
Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound.
Thomas Hood, Sonnets, Silence.
Est et fideli tuta silentio merces.
There is likewise a reward for faithful silence.
Horace, Carmina, III. 2. 25.
Not much talk—a great, sweet silence.
Henry James, Jr., A Bundle of Letters, Letter IV.
Vessels never give so great a sound as when they are empty.
Bishop John Jewell, Defense of the Apology for the Church of England.
Rarus sermo illis et magna libido tacendi.
Their conversation was brief, and their desire was to be silent.
Juvenal, Satires, II. 14.
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time.
John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn.
Les gens sans bruit sont dangereux;
Il n'en est pas ainsi des autres.
Silent people are dangerous; others are not so.
Jean de La Fontaine, Fables, VIII. 23.
Some sipping punch, some sipping tea,
But as you by their faces see
All silent and all damned.
Charles Lamb, lines made up from a stanza in Wordsworth's Peter Bell.
All was silent as before—
All silent save the dripping rain.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A Rainy Day.
What shall I say to you? What can I say
Better than silence is?
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Morituri Solutamus, line 128.
Three Silences there are: the first of speech,
The second of desire, the third of thought.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Three Silences of Molinos.
Where the streame runneth smoothest, the water is deepest.
John Lyly, Euphues and His England, p. 287.
I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea,
And the silence of the city when it pauses,
And the silence of a man and a maid,
And the silence for which music alone finds the word.
Edgar Lee Masters, Silence.
Dixisse me, inquit, aliquando pœnituit, tacuisse nunquam.
He [Xenocrates] said that he had often repented speaking, but never of holding his tongue.
Valerius Maximus, Book VII. 2, Ext. 7.
Nothing is more useful than silence.
Menander, Ex Incert. Comœd, p. 216.
That silence is one of the great arts of conversation is allowed by Cicero himself, who says, there is not only an art, but even an eloquence in it.
Hannah More, Essays on Various Subjects, Thoughts on Conversation.
Silence sweeter is than speech.
Dinah Craik, Magnus and Morna, scene 3.
Be silent and safe—silence never betrays you.
John Boyle O'Reilly, Rules of the Road, Stanza 2.
Sed taciti fecere tamen convicia vultus.
But still her silent looks loudly reproached me.
Ovid, Amorum (16 BC), I. 7. 21.
Sæpe tacens vocem verbaque vultus habet.
The silent countenance often speaks.
Ovid, Ars Amatoria, I. 574.
Exigua est virtus præstare silentia rebus;
At contra, gravis est culpa tacenda loqui.
Slight is the merit of keeping silence on a matter, on the other hand serious is the guilt of talking on things whereon we should be silent.
Ovid, Ars Amatoria, Book II. 603.
Silence sleeping on a waste of ocean.
Percy Somers Payne, Rest.
Remember what Simonides said,—that he never repented that he had held his tongue, but often that he had spoken.
Plutarch, Morals, Volume I. Rules for the Preservation of Health.
Said Periander, "Hesiod might as well have kept his breath to cool his pottage."
Plutarch, Morals, Volume II. The Banquet of the Seven Wise Men.
La douleur qui se tait n'en est que plus funeste.
Silent anguish is the more dangerous.
Jean Racine, Andromaque, III. 3.
Silence in love bewrays more woe
Than words, though ne'er so witty;
A beggar that is dumb, you know,
May challenge double pity.
Sir Walter Raleigh, The Silent Lover, Stanza 9.
The silente man still suffers wrong.
The Rock of Regard. J. P. Collier's Reprint. (1576).
Silence more musical than any song.
Christina G. Rossetti, Sonnet, Rest.
Altissima quæque flumina minimo sono labuntur.
The deepest rivers flow with the least sound.
Quintus Curtius Rufus, De Rebus Gestis Alexandri Magni, VII, 4, 13.
Doch große Seelen dulden still.
Great souls suffer in silence.
Friedrich Schiller, Don Carlos, I. 4. 52.
Bekker schweigt in sieben Sprachen.
Bekker is silent in seven languages.
Schleiermacher. See letter of Zelter to Goethe (March 15, 1830).
Wise Men say nothing in dangerous times.
John Selden, Table Talk, Wisdom.
Tacere multis discitur vitæ malis.
Silence is learned by the many misfortunes of life.
Seneca, Thyestes, 319.
Silence! Oh, well are Death and Sleep and Thou
Three brethren named, the guardians gloomy-winged,
Of one abyss, where life and truth and joy
Are swallowed up.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Fragments, Silence.
Shallow brookes murmur moste, deepe silent slide away.
Sir Philip Sidney, The Arcadia, Thirsis and Dorus.
Macaulay is like a book in breeches * * * He has occasional flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful.
Sydney Smith, Lady Holland's Memoir, Volume I, p. 363.
Le silence du peuple est la leçon des rois.
The silence of the people is a lesson for kings.
Soanen, Bishop of Senax; also Abbé de Beauvais, funeral oration over Louis XV.
Woman, to women silence is the best ornament.
Sophocles, Ajax, 293.
To me so deep a silence portends some dread event; a clamorous sorrow wastes itself in sound.
Sophocles, Antigone, 1251.
The deepest rivers make least din,
The silent soule doth most abound in care.
Earl of Stirling, Aurora (1604), Song.
But let me silent be:
For silence is the speech of love,
The music of the spheres above.
Richard Henry Stoddard, Speech of Love, Stanza 4.
Of every noble work the silent part is best,
Of all expression, that which cannot be expressed.
William Wentworth Story, The Unexpressed.
And I too talk, and lose the touch
I talk of. Surely, after all,
The noblest answer unto such
Is kindly silence when they brawl.
Alfred Tennyson, The After Thought, in Punch (March 7, 1846); Altered in the published poems to: "Is perfect stillness when they brawl".
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence.
William Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality, IX.
No sound is uttered,—but a deep
And solemn harmony pervades
The hollow vale from steep to steep,
And penetrates the glades.
William Wordsworth, Composed upon an Evening of Extraordinary Splendour and Beauty.
The silence that is in the starry sky.
William Wordsworth, Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle.
Jump to: navigation, search
Napoli, chiostro di Santa Chiara: allegoria del Silenzio
Quotes about Silence.
Quotes
There are times when silence is the best way to yell at the top of your voice.
O. A. Battista, from Braude's Second Encyclopedia of stories, quotations, and anecdotes.
Behind the word is silence. Behind that silence is forgetfulness.
Giannina Braschi, "Empire of Dreams," Part I, "Assault on Time".
All Heaven and Earth are still, though not in sleep,
But breathless, as we grow when feeling most.
Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto III (1816), Stanza 89.
Speech is of time, silence is of eternity.
Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834), Book III, chapter 3.
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule.
Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834), Book III, chapter 3.
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.
Thomas Carlyle, Sir Walter Scott (1838).
Silence is more eloquent than words.
Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero Worship (1840), Lecture II.
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
Max Ehrmann, "Desiderata" (1927).
Silence best speaks the mind.
Phineas Fletcher, Piscatorie Eclogues (1633), V, st. 13.
Take heed of still waters, they quick pass away.
George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum (1651).
Silence, according to western and eastern tradition alike, is necessary for the emergence of persons. It is taken from us by machines that ape people. We could easily be made increasingly dependent on machines for speaking and for thinking, as we are already dependent on machines for moving.
Ivan Illich, "Silence is a Commons" (1982), as published in The CoEvolution Quarterly, Winter 1983.
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on
John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn.
There are grammatical errors even in his silence.
Stanisław Jerzy Lec, Unkempt Thoughts.
Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline (1847), Part II, Section 1
The surest pledge of a deathless name
Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Herons of Elmwood", in Kéramos and Other Poems (1878).
* You know
There are moments when silence, prolong'd and unbroken,
More expressive may be than all words ever spoken,
It is when the heart has an instinct of what
In the heart of another is passing.
Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Lucile (1860), Part II, Canto I, Stanza 20.
... There's a joy,
To the fond votaries of fame unknown,
To hear the still small voice of conscience speak
In whisp'ring plaudit to the silent soul.
Hannah More, David and Goliath, Part I
Be check'd for silence,
But never tax'd for speech.
William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well (1600s), Act I, scene 1, line 76.
I'll speak to thee in silence.
William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), Act V, scene 4, line 29.
The rest is silence.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act V, scene 2, line 368.
The saying is true "The empty vessel makes the greatest sound."
William Shakespeare, Henry V (c. 1599), Act IV, scene 4, line 72.
Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep.
William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part II (c. 1590-91), Act III, scene 1, line 58.
Silence is only commendable
In a neat's tongue dried and a maid not vendible.
William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act I, scene 1, line 111.
'Tis old, but true, still swine eat all the draff.
William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1597; published 1602), Act IV, scene 2, line 96.
Silence is the perfectest herald of joy:
I were but little happy, if I could say how much.
William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99), Act II, scene 1, line 317.
What; gone without a word?
Ay, so true love should do: it cannot speak;
For truth hath better deeds than words to grace it.
William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1590s), Act II, scene 2, line 16.
There was speech in their dumbness, language in their very gesture.
William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610–11), Act V, scene 2, line 12.
But my words like silent raindrops fell, and echoed in the wells of silence.
Paul Simon, The Sound of Silence.
"Do not too hastily conclude that silence is indifference. Indifference is not to care, not to act, not even to think or breathe. Indifference is inhuman and inhumane. Silence, on the other hand, is almost always premeditated, a willful act. Without silence there would be no sound."
Justin Bryan Snider, a teacher, who posted this on his daily quotation board on October 17, 2006 at Li Po Chun United World College of Hong Kong
The things you do not have to say make you rich.
Saying the things you do not have to say weakens your talk.
Hearing the things you do not need to hear dulls your hearing.
And the things you know before you hear them, these are you, and this is why you are in the world.
William Stafford, Crossing Unmarked Snow.
Silence, beautiful voice.
Alfred Tennyson, Maud; A Monodrama (1855), Part V, Stanza 3.
Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.
Martin Farquhar Tupper, Proverbial Philosophy (1838-1842), "Of Discretion".
The best way to describe silence is to say nothing—but what grace!
Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun, Vol. III, Ch. 37: Terminus Est.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 707-10.
But silence never shows itself to so great an advantage, as when it is made the reply to calumny and defamation, provided that we give no just occasion for them.
Joseph Addison, The Tatler, No. 133.
Alta vendetta
D'alto silenzio è figlia.
Deep vengeance is the daughter of deep silence.
Vittorio Alfieri, La Congiura de' Pazzi, I, 1.
Qui tacet, consentire videtur.
Silence gives consent.
Pope Boniface VIII. Taken from the Canon Law, Decretals, Book V. 12. 43. Richard Fuller, Wise Sentences. Oliver Goldsmith, The Good-Natured Man, Act II.
Le silence est l'esprit das sots,
Et l'une des vertus du sage.
Silence is the genius of fools and one of the virtues of the wise.
Bernard de Bonnard.
Three things are ever silent—Thought, Destiny, and the Grave.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Harold, Book X, Chapter II.
There was silence deep as death;
And the boldest held his breath,
For a time.
Thomas Campbell, Battle of the Baltic.
Speech is great; but silence is greater.
Thomas Carlyle, Essays, Characteristics of Shakespeare.
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.
Thomas Carlyle, Essays, Memoir of the Life of Scott.
There are haunters of the silence, ghosts that hold the heart and brain.
Madison Cawein, Haunters of the Silence.
Cum tacent clamant.
When they hold their tongues they cry out.
Cicero, In Catilinam, 1. 8.
And they three passed over the white sands, between the rocks, silent as the shadows.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Wanderings of Cain.
Striving to tell his woes, words would not come;
For light cares speak, when mighty griefs are dumb.
Samuel Daniel, Complaint of Rosamond, Stanza 114.
Il ne voit que la nuit, n'entend que le silence.
He sees only night, and hears only silence.
Jacques Delille, Imagination, IV.
Silence is the mother of Truth.
Benjamin Disraeli, Tancred (1847), Book IV, Chapter IV.
A horrid stillness first invades the ear,
And in that silence we the tempest fear.
John Dryden, Astræa Redux, line 7.
Stillborn silence! thou that art
Flood-gate of the deeper heart!
Richard Fleckno, Silence.
Small griefs find tongues: full casques are ever found
To give, if any, yet but little sound.
Deep waters noyselesse are; and this we know,
That chiding streams betray small depth below.
Robert Herrick, Hesperides, To His Mistresse Objecting to Him Neither Toying or Talking.
And silence, like a poultice, comes
To heal the blows of sound.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Music Grinder.
There is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,
In the cold grave—under the deep, deep sea,
Or in wide desert where no life is found,
Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound.
Thomas Hood, Sonnets, Silence.
Est et fideli tuta silentio merces.
There is likewise a reward for faithful silence.
Horace, Carmina, III. 2. 25.
Not much talk—a great, sweet silence.
Henry James, Jr., A Bundle of Letters, Letter IV.
Vessels never give so great a sound as when they are empty.
Bishop John Jewell, Defense of the Apology for the Church of England.
Rarus sermo illis et magna libido tacendi.
Their conversation was brief, and their desire was to be silent.
Juvenal, Satires, II. 14.
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time.
John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn.
Les gens sans bruit sont dangereux;
Il n'en est pas ainsi des autres.
Silent people are dangerous; others are not so.
Jean de La Fontaine, Fables, VIII. 23.
Some sipping punch, some sipping tea,
But as you by their faces see
All silent and all damned.
Charles Lamb, lines made up from a stanza in Wordsworth's Peter Bell.
All was silent as before—
All silent save the dripping rain.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A Rainy Day.
What shall I say to you? What can I say
Better than silence is?
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Morituri Solutamus, line 128.
Three Silences there are: the first of speech,
The second of desire, the third of thought.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Three Silences of Molinos.
Where the streame runneth smoothest, the water is deepest.
John Lyly, Euphues and His England, p. 287.
I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea,
And the silence of the city when it pauses,
And the silence of a man and a maid,
And the silence for which music alone finds the word.
Edgar Lee Masters, Silence.
Dixisse me, inquit, aliquando pœnituit, tacuisse nunquam.
He [Xenocrates] said that he had often repented speaking, but never of holding his tongue.
Valerius Maximus, Book VII. 2, Ext. 7.
Nothing is more useful than silence.
Menander, Ex Incert. Comœd, p. 216.
That silence is one of the great arts of conversation is allowed by Cicero himself, who says, there is not only an art, but even an eloquence in it.
Hannah More, Essays on Various Subjects, Thoughts on Conversation.
Silence sweeter is than speech.
Dinah Craik, Magnus and Morna, scene 3.
Be silent and safe—silence never betrays you.
John Boyle O'Reilly, Rules of the Road, Stanza 2.
Sed taciti fecere tamen convicia vultus.
But still her silent looks loudly reproached me.
Ovid, Amorum (16 BC), I. 7. 21.
Sæpe tacens vocem verbaque vultus habet.
The silent countenance often speaks.
Ovid, Ars Amatoria, I. 574.
Exigua est virtus præstare silentia rebus;
At contra, gravis est culpa tacenda loqui.
Slight is the merit of keeping silence on a matter, on the other hand serious is the guilt of talking on things whereon we should be silent.
Ovid, Ars Amatoria, Book II. 603.
Silence sleeping on a waste of ocean.
Percy Somers Payne, Rest.
Remember what Simonides said,—that he never repented that he had held his tongue, but often that he had spoken.
Plutarch, Morals, Volume I. Rules for the Preservation of Health.
Said Periander, "Hesiod might as well have kept his breath to cool his pottage."
Plutarch, Morals, Volume II. The Banquet of the Seven Wise Men.
La douleur qui se tait n'en est que plus funeste.
Silent anguish is the more dangerous.
Jean Racine, Andromaque, III. 3.
Silence in love bewrays more woe
Than words, though ne'er so witty;
A beggar that is dumb, you know,
May challenge double pity.
Sir Walter Raleigh, The Silent Lover, Stanza 9.
The silente man still suffers wrong.
The Rock of Regard. J. P. Collier's Reprint. (1576).
Silence more musical than any song.
Christina G. Rossetti, Sonnet, Rest.
Altissima quæque flumina minimo sono labuntur.
The deepest rivers flow with the least sound.
Quintus Curtius Rufus, De Rebus Gestis Alexandri Magni, VII, 4, 13.
Doch große Seelen dulden still.
Great souls suffer in silence.
Friedrich Schiller, Don Carlos, I. 4. 52.
Bekker schweigt in sieben Sprachen.
Bekker is silent in seven languages.
Schleiermacher. See letter of Zelter to Goethe (March 15, 1830).
Wise Men say nothing in dangerous times.
John Selden, Table Talk, Wisdom.
Tacere multis discitur vitæ malis.
Silence is learned by the many misfortunes of life.
Seneca, Thyestes, 319.
Silence! Oh, well are Death and Sleep and Thou
Three brethren named, the guardians gloomy-winged,
Of one abyss, where life and truth and joy
Are swallowed up.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Fragments, Silence.
Shallow brookes murmur moste, deepe silent slide away.
Sir Philip Sidney, The Arcadia, Thirsis and Dorus.
Macaulay is like a book in breeches * * * He has occasional flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful.
Sydney Smith, Lady Holland's Memoir, Volume I, p. 363.
Le silence du peuple est la leçon des rois.
The silence of the people is a lesson for kings.
Soanen, Bishop of Senax; also Abbé de Beauvais, funeral oration over Louis XV.
Woman, to women silence is the best ornament.
Sophocles, Ajax, 293.
To me so deep a silence portends some dread event; a clamorous sorrow wastes itself in sound.
Sophocles, Antigone, 1251.
The deepest rivers make least din,
The silent soule doth most abound in care.
Earl of Stirling, Aurora (1604), Song.
But let me silent be:
For silence is the speech of love,
The music of the spheres above.
Richard Henry Stoddard, Speech of Love, Stanza 4.
Of every noble work the silent part is best,
Of all expression, that which cannot be expressed.
William Wentworth Story, The Unexpressed.
And I too talk, and lose the touch
I talk of. Surely, after all,
The noblest answer unto such
Is kindly silence when they brawl.
Alfred Tennyson, The After Thought, in Punch (March 7, 1846); Altered in the published poems to: "Is perfect stillness when they brawl".
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence.
William Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality, IX.
No sound is uttered,—but a deep
And solemn harmony pervades
The hollow vale from steep to steep,
And penetrates the glades.
William Wordsworth, Composed upon an Evening of Extraordinary Splendour and Beauty.
The silence that is in the starry sky.
William Wordsworth, Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle.
