External manners of lament / Are merely shadows to the unseen grief / That swells with silence in the tortured soul.
Chi parla semina, chi tace raccoglie=--Who speaks, sows; who keeps silence, reaps.
Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.
The cup which our Father giveth us to drink is a cup for the will. It is easy for the lips to drain it when once the heart has accepted it. Not on the heights of Calvary, but in the shadows of Gethsemane is the cup presented; the act is easy after the choice. The real battle-field is in the silence of the spirit. Conquer there, and thou art crowned.--_George Matheson._
The man who cannot enjoy his natural gifts in silence, and find his reward in the exercise of them, but must wait and hope for their recognition by others, must expect to reap only disappointment and vexation.
I have seen A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell, To which, in silence hushed, his very soul Listened intensely; and his countenance soon Brightened with joy, for from within were heard Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed Mysterious union with his native sea.
Macaulay is like a book in breeches. . . . He has occasional flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful.
When we two parted In silence and tears, Half broken-hearted, To sever for years.
The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence.
Music and silence... combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.
I 'm on the sea! I 'm on the sea! I am where I would ever be, With the blue above and the blue below, And silence wheresoe'er I go.
Wisdom is made up of ten parts--nine of which are silence, and the tenth is brevity of language.
To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.
We have seen the highest circle of spiraling powers. We have named this circle God. We might have given it any other name we wished: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence. But we have named it God because only this name, for primordial reasons, can stir our hearts profoundly. And this deeply felt emotion is indispensable if we are to touch, body with body, the dread essence beyond logic. Within this gigantic circle of divinity we are in duty bound to separate and perceive clearly the small, burning arc of our epoch.
I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.
It is the fate of a woman / Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless, / Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence.
Chi tace confessa=--Silence is confession.
A sound so fine, there 's nothing lives 'Twixt it and silence.
The tree of silence bears the fruit of peace.
~Silence.~--The main reason why silence is so efficacious an element of repute is, first, because of that magnification which proverbially belongs to the unknown; and, secondly, because silence provokes no man's envy, and wounds no man's self-love.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
Le silence est le parti le plus sur pour celui qui se defie de soi-meme=--Silence is the safest course for the man who is diffident of himself.
But such fault-finders pass over in silence the fact that this is the true manner of knowing the Artificer of such great and marvellous things, and that this is the true way in which to love so great an Inventor! For great love proceeds from the perfect knowledge of the thing loved; and if you do not know it you can love it but little or not at all; and if you love it for the gain which you anticipate obtaining from it and not for its supreme virtue, you are like the dog which wags its tail and shows signs of joy, leaping towards him who can give him a bone. But if you knew the virtue of a man you would love him more--if that virtue was in its place.
There is a silence where hath been no sound, There is a silence where no sound may be,-- In the cold grave, under the deep, deep sea, Or in the wide desert where no life is found.
All the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.
Schweigen ist das Heiligthum der Klugheit. Es birgt nicht bloss Geheimnisse, sondern auch Fehler=--Silence is the sanctuary of prudence. It conceals not merely secrets, but blemishes.
It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say.
Looking round on the noisy inanity of the world, words with little meaning, actions with little worth, one loves to reflect on the great empire of silence. The noble silent men, scattered here and there each in his department, silently thinking, silently working; whom no morning newspaper makes mention of.
A man conceals his ignorance by his silence.
The silence often of pure innocence / Persuades when speaking fails.
Traditions make up the reasonings of the simple, and serve to silence every inquiry.
If people would only define what they mean by knowing, they would shrink from the very idea that God can ever be known by us in the same sense in which everything else is known, or that with regard to Him we could ever be anything but Agnostics. All human knowledge begins with the senses, and goes on from sensations to percepts, from percepts to concepts and names. And yet the same people who insist that they know God, will declare in the same breath that no one can see God and live. Let us only define the meaning of knowing, and keep the different senses in which this word has been used carefully apart, and I doubt whether any one would venture to say that, in the true sense of the word, he is not an Agnostic as regards the true nature of God. This silence before a nameless Being does not exclude a true belief in God, nor devotion, nor love of a Being beyond our senses, beyond our understanding, beyond our reason, and therefore beyond all names.
Love silence rather than speech in these tragic days, when for very speaking the voice of man has fallen inarticulate to man.
ist golden_,--"Speech is silvern, Silence is golden;" or, as I might rather express it, Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity.
Sub silentio=--In silence, _i.e._, without notice being taken.
I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty; I like their delicacy; I like their vivacity; and I like their silence.
On and on and on and on he strode, far out over the sands, singing wildly to the sea, crying to greet the advent of the life that had cried to him. Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had leaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life! A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory. On and on and on and on!
Tacent, satis laudant=--Their silence is praise enough.
Fame may be compared to a scold; the best way to silence her is to let her alone, and she will at last be out of breath in blowing her own trumpet.
He looked down at the books. There was a long silence. Then he raised his eyes and directed his gaze at Gershon, and Gershon did not look away. "I will tell you, Loran what is of importance is not that there may be nothing. We have always acknowledged that as a possibility. What is important is that if indeed there is nothing, then we should be prepared to make something out of the one thing we have left to us -- ourselves. I do not know what else to tell you, Loran. No one is in possession of all wisdom. No one." Gershon sat in silence, looking at Nathan Malkuson.
Quid me alta silentia cogis / Rumpere=--Why force me to break the deep silence?
Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. Aldous Huxley
In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation, silence and speech acting together, some embodiment and revelation of the infinite, made to blend itself with the finite, to stand visible, and, as it were, attainable there.
It’s like that one time you woke up and tripped down a rabbit hole and a blond girl in a blue dress kept asking you for directions but you couldn’t tell her, you had no idea, you kept trying to speak but your throat was full of rain clouds and it’s like someone has taken the ocean and filled it with silence and dumped it all over this room.
When you beat a drum, you create NOW, when silence becomes a sound so enormous and alive it feels like you're breathing in the clouds and the sky, and your heart is the rain and the thunder.
By thunders of white silence.
A degree of silence envelops Washington’s actions; he moved slowly; one might say that he felt charged with future liberty, and that he feared to compromise it. It was not his own destiny that inspired this new species of hero: it was that of his country; he did not allow himself to enjoy what did not belong to him; but from that profound humility what glory emerged! Search the woods where Washington’s sword gleamed: what do you find? Tombs? No; a world! Washington has left the United States behind for a monument on the field of battle.
And I once chanced to paint a picture which represented a divine subject, and it was bought by the lover of her whom it represented, and he wished to strip it of its divine character so as to be able to kiss it without offence. But finally his conscience overcame his desire and his lust and he was compelled to remove the picture from his house. Now go thou, poet, and describe a beautiful woman without giving the semblance of {124} the living thing, and with it arouse such desire in men! If thou sayest: I will describe then Hell and Paradise and other delights and terrors,--the painter will surpass thee, because he will set before thee things which in silence will [make thee] give utterance to such delight, and so terrify thee as to cause thee to wish to take flight. Painting stirs the senses more readily than poetry. And if thou sayest that by speech thou canst convulse a crowd with laughter or tears, I rejoin that it is not thou who stirrest the crowd, it is the pathos of the orator, and his mirth. A painter once painted a picture which caused everybody who saw it to yawn, and this happened every time the eye fell on the picture, which represented a person yawning. Others have painted libidinous acts of such sensuality that they have incited those who gazed on them to similar acts, and poetry could not do this.
The difference between loquacity and silence is like the difference between the noisy frog and the silent whale.
It is the little rift within the lute That by and by will make the music mute, And ever widening slowly silence all.
The silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails.
The temple of our purest thoughts is--silence!
It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie.
Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence. Robert Fripp
People would do well if, tarrying here for years together, they observed a while a Pythagorean silence.
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time.
Every other master is known by what he utters; the master of style commends himself to me by what he wisely passes over in silence.
Let it be tenable in your silence still.
Grosse Seelen dulden still=--Great souls endure in silence.
Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life, but define yourself.
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
Poets of old date, being privileged with senses, had also enjoyed external Nature; but chiefly as we enjoy the crystal cup which holds good or bad liquor for us; that is to say, in silence, or with slight incidental commentary; never, as I compute, till after the "Sorrows of Werter" was there man found who would say: Come, let us make a description: Having drunk the liquor, Come, let us eat the glass.
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Pleasures lie thickest where no pleasures seem; / There's not a leaf that falls upon the ground / But holds some joy of silence or of sound, / Some sprite begotten of a summer dream.
La silence est la vertu de ceux qui ne sont pas sages=--Silence is the virtue of the foolish.
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?
No trouble, cross, or death / E'er shall silence faith and praise.
There are times when silence, if the preacher did but know, / Shall preach to better purpose than a sermon stale and flat.
Solitude is the home of the strong; silence, their prayer.
The rest is silence.
Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better.
The rest is silence.
Learn to hold thy tongue. Five words cost Zacharias forty weeks' silence.
Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden=--Speech is silvern, silence golden.
If a word be worth one shekel, silence is worth two.
We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.
Virtue is undoubtedly beneficent; but the man is to be envied to whom her ways seem in anywise playful. And though she may not talk much about suffering and self-denial, her silence on that topic may be accounted for on the principle _ça va sans dire_.
Within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related--the Eternal One.
Reden ist Silber und Schweigen ist Gold=--Speech is silver and silence is gold.
I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not, it is at least more unusual nowadays to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find one who cannot.
We may give more offence by our silence than even by impertinence.
It is a small virtue to keep silence on matters, but a grave fault to speak of what should be kept silent.
Egregii mortalem, altique silenti=--A being of extraordinary and profound silence.
Veritas vel mendacio corrumpitur vel silentio=--Truth is violated by falsehood or by silence.
The great world for which we live seems to me as good as the little world in which we live, and I have never known why faith should fail, when everything, even pain and sorrow, is so wonderfully good and beautiful. All that we say to console ourselves on the death of those we loved, and who loved us, is hollow and false; the only true thing is rest and silence. We cannot understand, and therefore we must and can trust. There can be no mistake, no gap, in the world-poem to which we belong; and I believe that those stars which without their own contrivance have met, will meet again. How, where, when? God knows this, and that is enough.
"I have often regretted my speech, never my silence."
in the man's rich silence after the expense and strain of gaiety.
A prating barber asked Archelaus how he would be trimmed. He answered, "In silence."
Your silence will not protect you.
Thought works in silence, so does virtue.
In der jetzigen Zeit soll Niemand schweigen oder nachgeben; man muss reden und sich ruhren, nicht um zu uberwinden, sondern sich auf seinem Posten zu erhalten; ob bei der Majoritat oder Minoritat, ist ganz gleichgultig=--At the present time no one should yield or keep silence; every one must speak and bestir himself, not in order to gain the upper hand, but to keep his own position--whether with the majority or the minority is quite indifferent.
Le silence est l'esprit des sots, / Et l'une des vertus du sage=--Silence is the wit of fools, and one of the virtues of the wise man.
Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled nest-egg; and when it takes to cackling, will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.--_George Eliot._
Where the storyteller is loyal, eternally and unswervingly loyal to the story, there, in the end, silence will speak. Where the story has been betrayed, silence is but emptiness. But we, the faithful, when we have spoken our last word, will hear the voice of silence.
Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.
There was silence deep as death, And the boldest held his breath For a time.
Deep vengeance is the daughter of deep silence.
To a useless question we should answer only by silence.--ST. VINCENT FERRER.
Sound and sufficient reason falls, after all, to the share of but few men, and those few men exert their influence in silence.
If a barrel-organ in a slum can but drown a curse, let no Christian silence it.
It is the little rift within the lute / That by and by will make the music mute, / And, ever widening, slowly silence all.
Quotes by people born this day, already used as QOTD: The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
Good as is discourse, silence is better, and shames it.
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces alarms me.
The silence that is in the starry sky.
The thing a lie wants, and solicits from all men, is not a correct natural history of it, but the swiftest possible extinction of it, followed by entire silence about it.
You will find that silence, or very gentle words, are the most exquisite revenge for reproaches.
Bees will not work except in darkness; thought will not work except in silence; neither will virtue work except in secrecy.
The fish in the water is silent, the animals on the earth is noisy, the bird in the air is singing. But man has in him the silence of the sea, the noise of the earth and the music of the air.
The silence of a wise man is always meaningful.
Great souls endure in silence.
Come then, expressive silence, muse His praise.
I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use — silence, exile and cunning.
Love delights in paradoxes. Saddest when it has most reason to be gay, sighs are the signs of its deepest joy, and silence the expression of its yearning tenderness.
When we have to reply to some one who speaks harshly to us, we must always do it with gentleness. If we are angry, it is better to keep silence.--ST. ALPHONSUS.
Aim for the stars and maybe you'll reach the sky. People talking without speaking, People hearing without listening, People writing songs that voices never share, and no one dare disturb the Sound of Silence.
To me, literature is a calling, even a kind of salvation. It connects me with an enterprise that is over 2,000 years old. What do we have from the past? Art and thought. That's what lasts. That's what continues to feed people and give them an idea of something better. A better state of one's feelings or simply the idea of a silence in one's self that allows one to think or to feel. Which to me is the same.
Contempt loves the silence it thrives in the dark with fine winding tendrils that strangle the heart.
When people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory. [Memphis Speech, 1968] History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. [Ibid.]
Thou hast wounded the spirit that loved thee And cherish'd thine image for years; Thou hast taught me at last to forget thee, In secret, in silence, and tears.
Quotes by people born this day, already used as QOTD: Hello darkness, my old friend I've come to talk with you again Because a vision softly creeping Left its seeds while I was sleeping And the vision that was planted in my brain Still remains Within the sound of silence.