Silence Quotes
Silence is a topic where the shortest lines do best. Wittgenstein’s “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” closes the Tractatus (1922), and de Gaulle, in Le Fil de l’épée (1932), says nothing builds up authority like silence. Longfellow’s Evangeline (1847) has sorrow and silence both strong, with patient endurance godlike.
Two sayings are credited to Publilius Syrus and marked disputed: that he has often regretted his speech and never his silence, and that one should be silent or say something better than silence. “Silence is the wit of fools, and one of the virtues of the wise” is credited to Anatole France and flagged misattributed. The notes trace it to an eighteenth-century poem, Bernard de Bonnard’s “Le Silence,” in the Almanach des Muses (1776).
If speaking pleases you, be silent! If silence pleases you, Speak!
By Silence, the discretion of a man is known: and a fool, keeping Silence, seemeth to be wise.
After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor but the silence of the bystander.
Consciences keep silence more often than they should, that's why laws were created.
The loudest voice in the room is usually the most afraid of silence.