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).
Timely silence, then, is precious, for it is nothing less than the mother of the wisest thoughts.
Silence is always beautiful, and a silent person is always more beautiful than one who talks.
The silence walked beside them like the ghost of a dead man.
The best way to describe silence is to say nothing—but what grace!
In the moment of silence Agnes fancied she could hear the stalactites grow.
The saying is true "The empty vessel makes the greatest sound."
To me so deep a silence portends some dread event; a clamorous sorrow wastes itself in sound.