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Great souls endure in silence.

— Friedrich Schiller Don Carlos (1787)

Grosse Seelen dulden still.

Original text (German)

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Notes from Wikiquote

Act I, sc. iv ; as translated by R. D. Boylan and Joseph Mellish (1902)

Variants

"Great spirits suffer patiently"; as translated by A. Leslie and Jeanne R. Willson (1983)

Topics

Silence

More quotes by Friedrich Schiller

No cause has he to say his doom is harsh,
Who's made the master of his destiny.

Wilhelm Tell (1803)

Have Love. Not love alone for one,
But men, as man, thy brothers call;
And scatter, like the circling sun,
Thy charities on all.

He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times.

Wallenstein (1798)

I speak with the Eternal through the instrument of nature, — through the world's history: I read the soul of the artist in his Apollo.

Love is only known by him who hopelessly persists in love.

Don Carlos (1787)

All Friedrich Schiller quotes →

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To sin by silence, when we should protest,
Makes cowards out of men.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox New Thought Pastels (1913)

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.

George Eliot

There are times when good words are to be left unsaid out of esteem for silence.

Benedict of Nursia

I think television has betrayed the meaning of democratic speech, adding visual chaos to the confusion of voices. What role does silence have in all this noise?

Federico Fellini I'm a Born Liar (2003)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Friedrich Schiller (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.