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Silence is an answer in the eyes of the wise.

ἡ γὰρ σιωπὴ τοῖς σοφοῖσ⟨ιν⟩ ἀπόκρισις.

Original text (Ancient Greek)

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Notes from Wikiquote

For silence is true wisdom's best reply.

Variants

(R. B. Appleton, 1927)

Topics

Silence

More quotes by Euripides

Events will take their course, it is no good of being angry at them; he is happiest who wisely turns them to the best account.

Humility, a sense of reverence before the sons of heaven — of all the prizes that a mortal man might win, these, I say, are wisest; these are best.

Bacchae (-405)

When good men die their goodness does not perish,
But lives though they are gone. As for the bad,
All that was theirs dies and is buried with them.

No! a Spartan maid could not be chaste, e'en if she would, who leaves her home and bares her limbs and lets her robe float free, to share with youths their races and their sports.

Andromache (-425)

One thing only, they say, competes in value with life, the possession of a heart blameless and good.

Hippolytus (-428)

All Euripides 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: Euripides (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.