Silence

From Wikiquote

Quotes about Silence

• Be silent always when you doubt your sense.
  • Alexander Pope

• Be silent as to services you have rendered, but speak of favours you have received.
  • Seneca the Elder

• But my words like silent raindrops fell, and echoed in the wells of silence.
  • Paul Simon, The Sound of Silence

• Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
  Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on
  • John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

• In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.
  • Henry David Thoreau

• In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr.

• It is a great thing to know the season for speech and the season for silence.
  • Seneca the Elder

• Silence says more than words ever could.
  • Jibo

• Silence is boring.
  • Dante

• Silence is sometimes the severest criticism.
  • Charles Buxton

• There are grammatical errors even in his silence.
  • Stanisław Jerzy Lec, Unkempt Thoughts

• 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

• 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

• When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
  • Henri Nouwen

• “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

• It was after I got to Boston that I went into the anechoic chamber at Harvard University. Anybody who knows me knows this story. I am constantly telling it. Anyway, in that silent room, I heard two sounds, one high and one low. Afterward I asked the engineer in charge why, if the room was so silent, I had heard two sounds. He said, 'Describe them.' I did. He said, 'The high one was your nervous system in operation. The low one was your blood in circulation.'
  • John Cage

• "If you do not understand my Silence, how will you understand my Words."
  • Author Unknown