Silence

Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say. ~~ Samuel Johnson

There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. ~~ John Cage [Silence]

One of the Clock, and silence deep
Then up the Stairway, black and steep
The old House-Cat comes creepy-creep
With soft feet goes from room to room
Her green eyes shining through the gloom,
And finds all fast asleep. ~~ Katharine Pyle

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. ~~ From the works of Max Ehrmann

Silence is the best tactic for him who distrusts himself. ~~ Francois de la Rochefoucauld

When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber. ~~ Sir Winston Churchill

Talk uses up ideas… Once I have spoken them aloud, they are lost to me, dissipated into the noisy air like smoke. Only if I bury them, like bulbs, in the rich soil of silence do they grow. ~~ Doris Grumbach

How beautiful the body is… How terrible when torn. The little flame of life sinks lower and lower and, with a flicker, goes out. It goes out like a candle goes out. Quietly and gently. It makes its protest at extinction, then submits. It has its say, then is silent. ~~ Norman Bethune

One must learn to be silent just as one must learn to talk. ~~ Victoria Wolff

A child enters your home and for the next twenty years makes so much noise you can hardly stand it. The child departs, leaving the house so silent, you think you are going mad. ~~ John Andrew Holmes

Silence, indifference, and inaction were Hitler's principal allies. ~~ Lord Jakobovits

Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best. ~~ Henry Van Dyke

As soon as one does not kill oneself, one must keep silent about life. ~~ Albert Camus

True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable. ~~ Dave Tyson Gentry

Oppression costs the oppressor too much if the oppressed stand up and protest. The protest need not be merely physical--the throwing of stones and bullets--if it is mental, spiritual; if it expresses itself in silent, persistent dissatisfaction, the cost to the oppressor is terrific. ~~ W. E. B. Du Bois

She often talked to the dog. The dog listened but never replied, and his silence was one of the pillars of their wonderful relationship. ~~ Dean Koontz [False Memory]

We need a reason to speak, but none to keep silent. ~~ Pierre Nicole

Silence is the best substitute for brains ever invented. ~~ Henry Ashurst

It is time for the great silent majority of Americans to stand up and be counted. ~~ Richard Milhous Nixon

Silence may be as variously shaded as speech. ~~ Edith Wharton

An audience of twenty thousand, sitting on its hands, could not have produced such an echoing silence. ~~ Mary Renault

A small boy shouted downstairs, "I'm scared of the dark." His father yelled back, "Don't be scared. God is with you." There was silence for a moment; and then the boy said, "Get up here fast -- I need somebody with skin on!" ~~ Unattributed

The correction of silence is what kills; when you know you have transgressed, and your friend says nothing and avoids your eye. ~~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. ~~ James Madison

The fog comes
on little cat feet.
it sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on. ~~ Carl Sandburg

Sometimes you have to be silent to be heard. ~~ Stanislaw J. Lec

Most silent men are silent because they haven't a thought in their heads and do not wish to be found out. ~~ George Jean Nathan

Beware of the danger signals that flag [relationship] problems: silence, secretiveness, or sudden outburst. ~~ Sylvia Porter

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

All about me may be silence and darkness, yet within me, in the spirit, is music and brightness, and color flashes through all my thoughts. ~~ Helen Keller

If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas … just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man. ~~ Fyodor Dostoyevski

Some people talk because they think sound is more manageable than silence. ~~ Margaret Halsey

I am indebted to the cat for a particular kind of honorable deceit, for a greater control over myself, for a characteristic aversion to brutal sounds, and for the need to keep silent for long periods of time. ~~ Colette

Thinking
Chattering to myself
Avoiding silence. ~~ Sam Keen

Silence has a suffocating, deadening effect. And the things that dies first is hope. ~~ Katie Sherrod [The Witness]

But once gain his [the cat's] confidence, and he is a friend for life. He shares your hours of work, of solitude, of melancholy. He spends whole evenings on your knee, purring and dozing, content with your silence, and spurning for your sake the society of his kind. ~~ Theophile Gautier

Silence is not a thing we make; it is something into which we enter. It is always there… All we can make is noise. ~~ Mother Maribel of Wantage

The absurd is born of the confrontation between the human call and the unreasonable silence of the world. ~~ Albert Camus

No witchcraft, no enemy action has silenced the rebirth of new life … The people have done it themselves. ~~ Rachel Carson

August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color… These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for. ~~ Natalie Babbit

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. ~~ Abraham Lincoln

Don't talk unless you can improve the silence. ~~ Vermont proverb

Silence is the sovereign contempt. ~~ Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls. ~~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence. ~~ George Eliot

The silence of a friend commonly amounts to treachery. His not daring to say anything in our behalf implies a tacit censure. ~~ William Hazlitt

Ours is a culture that emphasizes cure, or, short of that, immediate relief from symptoms, so that we can carry on with our busy lives. Unfortunately, in our cultural denial of the reality of chronic illness and disability, we frequently silence the voices of those who cannot deny it. ~~ Marsha Saxton and Florence Howe [With Wings]

Silence is golden, but I must say that some of the most discreet and dignified fools that I have ever met have been those who never ventured an opinion on any subject. ~~ Josh Billings

A yawn is a silent shout. ~~ G. K. Chesterton

We perceive silence where, in fact, there is a muffler. ~~ Louise Bernikow

Only when a man is safely ensconced under six feet of earth, with several tons of … granite upon his chest, is he in a position to give advice with any certainty, and then he is silent. ~~ A. Edward Newton

It is a great misfortune neither to have enough wit to talk well nor enough judgment to be silent. ~~ Jean de la Bruyere

Unanimity is worse than censorship. Censorship obliges us to hold our own truth silent; unanimity forces us to repeat the truth of others, even though we do not believe it… It dissolves our own personalities into a general, monotonous chorus. ~~ Luis Aguillar

If everybody thought before they spoke, the silence would be deafening. ~~ Gerald Barzan

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. ~~ Aldous Huxley

It was an exquisite day. It was one of those days so clear, so still, so silent, you almost feel the earth itself has stopped in astonishment at its own beauty. ~~ Katherine Mansfield

Save time for silence in your day. ~~ Unattributed

Acorns are planted silently by some unnoticed breeze. ~~ Thomas Carlyle

What was silent in the father speaks in the son, and often I found the son the unveiled secret of the father. ~~ Friedrich Nietzsche

She stayed bound to a gone moment, like a stopped clock with hands silently pointing an hour it cannot be. ~~ Elizabeth Bowen [The House in Paris]

Some people suffer in silence louder than others. ~~ Morrie Brickman

Oh my gloomy father,
why were you always so silent then. ~~ Ingeborg Bachman

If everybody thought before they spoke, the silence would be deafening. ~~ Gerald Barzan

The wise have a solid sense of silence and the ability to keep a storehouse of secrets. Their capacity and character are respected. ~~ Baltasar Gracian

Speech may be barren; but it is ridiculous to suppose that silence is always brooding on a nestful of eggs. ~~ George Eliot

Silence will not betray your thoughts but the expression on your face will. Humor has a hundred faces; tragedy only a few. ~~ H. G. Mendelson

Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech. ~~ Martin Tupper

If you shoot at mimes, should you use a silencer? ~~ Stephen Wright

Like the greatest virtue and the worst dogs, the fiercest hatred is silent. ~~ Jean Paul Richter

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him. ~~ John, Viscount Morley

Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments. It seems to hammer you into the ground. It drives you deeper and deeper into your own guilt. It makes the voices inside your head accuse you more viciously than any outside voices ever could. ~~ Erica Jong

Silence is the safety zone of conversation. ~~ Arnold H. Glasow

Throughout history it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph. ~~ Haile Selassie

Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an inevitable and silent propaganda. As far as lies in its power, it tends to transform the universe and humanity into its own image. ~~ Henri Amiel

If you really want to annoy your enemy, keep silent and leave him alone. ~~ Arabic proverb

Men fear silence as they fear solitude, because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life's nothingness. ~~ Andre Maurois

Silence is argument carried on by other means. ~~ Ernesto "Che" Guevara

In our times, significantly, the three outstanding voices against violence have been silenced by murder--Mahatma Gandhi in India, Archbishop Romero in El Salvador, and Dr. Martin Luther King, here at home. ~~ Millicent Fenwick

The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away. ~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time. ~~ John Steinbeck

Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unhewn marble of a great sculpture. ~~ Aldous Huxley

Silence settled on the courtroom like snow. ~~ Margaret Millar

Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unhewn marble of great sculpture. ~~ Aldous Huxley

There are nights when the wolves are silent, and only the moon howls. ~~ George Carlin

My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence. ~~ Edith Sitwell

Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is, like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone; all will leave it alone. ~~ Thomas De Quincey

Let him who believes in immortality enjoy his happiness in silence without giving himself airs about it. ~~ Goethe

If people find your silences interesting, don't disillusion them. ~~ Mignon McLaughlin

Television newsmen are breathless on how the game is being played, largely silent on what the game is all about. ~~ John Kenneth Galbraith

Not only does money speak; it also imposes silence. ~~ Aldous Huxley

Silence is a still noise. ~~ Josh Billings

To see the earth as we now see it, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on the bright loveliness in the unending night -- brothers who see now they are truly brothers. ~~ Archibald MacLeish

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. ~~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes of men. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or weak; and at last some crisis shows what we have become. ~~ Brooke Foss Westcott

A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials; it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech. ~~ E. M. Cioran

In silence man can most readily preserve his integrity. ~~ Meister Eckhart

All outward forms of religion are almost useless, and are the causes of endless strife … Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself, and never mind the rest. ~~ Beatrix Potter

What is the answer? [I was silent.] In that case, what is the question? ~~ Gertrude Stein

The problem of freedom in America is that of maintaining a competition of ideas, and you do not achieve that by silencing one brand of idea. ~~ Max Lerner

No power on earth, however, can abolish the merciless class distinction between those who are physically desirable and the lonely, spotted, silent, unfancied majority. ~~ John Mortimer

The silent person is often worth listening to. ~~ Unattributed

Silence isn't always golden, you know. Sometimes it's just plain yellow. ~~ Jan Kemp

The silence of a man who loves to praise, is a censure sufficiently severe. ~~ Charlotte Lennox [The Female Quixote]

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. ~~ Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

Some people mistake weakness for tact. If they are silent when they ought to speak and so feign an agreement they do not feel, they call it being tactful. Cowardice would be a much better name. ~~ Frank Medlicott

Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth. ~~ E. M. Cioran

I have always thought it would be a blessing if each person could be blind and deaf for a few days during his early adult life. Darkness would make him appreciate sight; silence would teach him the joys of sound. ~~ Helen Keller

There is no noise louder than a silent phone. ~~ Lois Wyse

God is the friend of silence. See how nature--trees, flowers, grass--grows in silence; see the stars, the moon, and the sun, how they move in silence. ~~ Mother Theresa (see Said Who?)

silence

When I interview people, and they give me an immediate answer, they're often not thinking. So I'm silent. I wait. Because they think they have to keep answering. And it's the second train of thought that's the better answer. ~~ Robin Leach