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).
I hate the uncultivated crowd and keep them at a distance. Favour me by your tongues (keep silence).
Death unites as well as separates; it silences all paltry feeling.
A thing, until it is everything, is noise, and once it is everything it is silence.
God is the silence of the universe, and man is the cry that gives meaning to that silence.
True penitence condemns to silence. What a man is ready to recall he would be willing to repeat.
When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half brokenhearted,
To sever for years.
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.