Top 100 Quotes About Not Speaking
#1. She had spoken it; but she trembled when it was done, conscious that her words were listened to, and daring not even to try to observe their effect.
Jane Austen
#2. This is not the proper place to begin speaking of this new passion of Ivan Fyodorovich's, which later affected his whole life: it could all serve as the plot for another story, for a different novel, which I do not even know that I shall ever undertake.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#3. Generally speaking, the more money that's involved in anything, the more people are expecting and hoping that it's not going to fail.
Chris Pine
#4. Since that time, war had literally been continuous, though strictly speaking it had not always been the same war.
George Orwell
#5. There are examples of ex-presidents speaking out. Jimmy Carter has not held back on a variety of issues. Harry Truman didn't.
Robert Dallek
#6. If I said in one of my songs that my English teacher wanted to have sex with me in junior high, all I'm saying, is that I'm not gay, you know? People confuse the lyrics for me speaking my mind. I don't agree with that lifestyle, but if that lifestyle is for you, then it's your business.
Eminem
#7. Generally speaking, writers who have been at it for a while, and who are any good at it, suffer from an acute kind of self-knowledge. The unexamined life is not a risk for them.
Mark Slouka
#8. To understand the Scripture is not simply to get information about God. If attended to with trust and faith, the Bible is the way to actually hear God speaking and also to meet God himself.
Timothy J. Keller
#9. When people complain of the decay of manners they have in mind not the impudent abbreviations of the crowd, but the decline in bowing and scraping and in speaking of one's employer as "the master." What the rich mean by the good manners of the poor is usually not civility, but servility.
Robert Wilson Lynd
#10. As a professional athlete and someone who has spent almost his entire life in boxing, not a day goes by when I don't think about coming back, but I am retired, and after speaking to my family and following a great deal of introspection, I have decided to stay retired.
Oscar De La Hoya
#11. What comes easiest for me is dialogue. Sometimes when my characters are speaking to me, I have to slow them down so that I'm not simply taking dictation.
Richard Russo
#12. So, when there is a strife of tongues, at some meeting, the chairman, to obtain unity, suggests that every one shall speak in French. Perhaps it is bad French; French may not contain the words that express the speaker's thoughts; nevertheless speaking French imposes some order, some uniformity.
Virginia Woolf
#13. The idea is to become an old wizard; to live a long and fruitful life and have family and be healthy and enjoy the ride. And speaking of the ride, why not let it rip, at least a little bit? Everyone I know who's really stoked about getting out of bed in the morning does that to some extent.
Laird Hamilton
#14. That there is a before-speaking, that we did
not always speak.
Erin Moure
#15. Just consider how terrible the day of your death will be
Others will go on speaking and you will not be able to argue back
Ram Mohan Roy
#16. He could hear his granny speaking. "No one's too poor to buy soap." Of course, many people were. But in Cockbill Street they bought soap just the same. The table might not have any food on it but, by gods, it was well scrubbed. That was Cockbill Street, where what you mainly ate was your pride.
Terry Pratchett
#17. You are concerned citizens." He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where "traditional values" meant "hang someone." He did not have a problem with this, broadly speaking, but it never hurt to understand your employer.
Terry Pratchett
#18. God does not look at our suffering from afar. It is an intimate event to him. He is the author of every detail, speaking the suffering as it occurs.
Ben Palpant
#19. In other words, Foxx represented what Sarah Palin (speaking at a campaign fundraiser in Greensboro three weeks before the election) called "the real America," by which she did not mean fallow farms and disability checks and crack.
George Packer
#20. Powerful new drug-free treatments have been developed for depression and for every conceivable type of anxiety, such as chronic worrying, shyness, public speaking anxiety, test anxiety, phobias, and panic attacks. The goal of the treatment is not just partial improvement but full recovery.
David D. Burns
#21. If you find your sustenance in Christ, my dear young people, and if you live profoundly in him as did the Apostle Paul, you will not be able to resist speaking about him and making him known and loved by many of your friends and contemporaries.
Pope Benedict XVI
#22. I am a Ford, not a Lincoln. My addresses will never be as eloquent as Mr. Lincoln's. But I will do my very best to equal his brevity and his plain speaking.
Gerald R. Ford
#23. Generally speaking, though, Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure. Ours is an entertainment-seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#24. [I]n speaking about someone's character, we do not say that he is wise or comprehending, but that he is gentle or moderate.
Aristotle.
#25. He did not enjoy speaking about women with other men, a practice which, in his estimation, was always clownish and braying.
Eleanor Catton
#26. If you re not speaking your own truth, you will never be able to be all you are meant to be. You cannot be pretending to be somebody else.
Oprah Winfrey
#27. Perhaps some people really are born unhappy. I surely hope not. Speaking for my sister and myself: We were born with the capacity and determination to be utterly happy all the time. Perhaps even in this we were freaks. Hi ho.
Kurt Vonnegut
#28. So we must work at our profession and not make anybody else's idleness an excuse for our own. There is no lack of readers and listeners; it is for us to produce something worth being written and heard.
Pliny The Younger
#29. Believe it or not, the number one fear in America remains public speaking. And, in some ways, I think that is a real shame because we are so blessed to live in a country where we are able to express ourselves, so we should want to do that.
Dana Perino
#30. The real evidence is not practically speaking in scholarship but in how Jesus and the Christianity based on him manifest themselves in the lives of practising Christians. Their lives are the proofs of their beliefs.
Lionel Blue
#31. Accustomed to lure him into speaking of himself. But she put them far less spontaneously, far less adroitly, than usual. Her one all-absorbing anxiety in entering that room was not an anxiety to be trifled with.
Wilkie Collins
#32. Speaking as somebody with three sisters and a very largely female Muslim family, there is not a single woman I know in my family or in their friends who would have accepted the wearing of a veil.
Salman Rushdie
#33. [On refusing to be silenced:] I do not pretend to be John the Baptist rebuking the Pharisees. I do not claim to be Nathan upbraiding David. I aspire only to be Balaam's ass, castigating his master.
Katharina Zell
#34. I'm not so sure," Dad said. "Every damn thing in the universe can be broken down into smaller things, even atom, even protons, so theoretically speaking, I guess you had a winning case. A collection of things should be considered one thing. Unfortunately, theory don't always carry the day.
Jeannette Walls
#35. Recently, the Germans have developed a tendency to prefer the so-called first (youthful) style of great artists to their mature works. Could it be that they do not realize that their aesthetic criteria, generally speaking, are juvenile?
Franz Grillparzer
#36. And, since they are theater people, they are all talking. All of them. Simultaneously. They do not need to be heard; they only need to be speaking.
John Green
#37. Mathematics has always shown a curious ability to be applicable to nature, and this may express a deep link between our minds and nature. We are the Universe speaking out, a part of nature. So it is not so surprising that our systems of logic and mathematics sing in tune with nature.
George Zebrowski
#38. I can never tire of speaking of the bridges of Paris. By day and by night have I paused on them to gaze at their views; the word not being too comprehensive for the crowds and groupings of objects that are visible from their arches.
James Fenimore Cooper
#39. Speaking of messy, I recently quit parenting. I do not parent in August. August parenting is not a good look for me. It's hotter than hell, and the children and I have already had a whole lot of togetherness.
Glennon Doyle Melton
#40. Radio is more powerful the closer we mimic the way we actually speak to each other. That's why Howard Stern is such a great radio talent. People on his show are actually speaking to each other. You might not like what they're saying, but they're real conversations.
Ira Glass
#41. Not many people were speaking truth to power in the '80s. I had a really good time doing it - I found it gratifying. It was a joy to have an opportunity to say what you believed. It's challenging to do it in fiction, but I liked writing the novels. I liked writing 'Democracy' particularly.
Joan Didion
#42. It was your brother. He must be insane."
"Not insane, dear." Sybilla, speaking gently, contradicted. "Not insane. But magnificently drunk, I fear.
Dorothy Dunnett
#43. If you ask an introvert a question, wait until she thinks about it. Introverts think before speaking, not through speaking. If you want to get to the good stuff, you need to slow down.
Laurie Helgoe
#44. It's become my brand in a way, you know, speaking the truth even though it was not politically correct.
Christine Lagarde
#46. The biggest thing I don't like about New York are the foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?
John Rocker
#47. Get in the habit of speaking positive, faith-filled words over your life, because a healthy self-image is one of the greatest assets you can have. It will not only cause you to rise higher, but it will inspire others around you to live at their best.
Victoria Osteen
#48. I listen to old Idaho, and there are moments of true inspiration there. I think the music is speaking on its own a little bit more. It's evolving, it's not losing its heart.
Jeff Martin
#49. My soul is not satisfied with an inert universe. The gods may not make a habit of speaking to me personally, but I can't help but whisper comments to them.
Thomm Quackenbush
#50. About two hours afterwards Gethryn discovered a suitable retort, but, coming to the conclusion that better late than never does not apply to repartees, refrained from speaking it.
P.G. Wodehouse
#51. That's why," he said speaking with averted face, "I wanted to do something first. I mean, to show I was worthy of you. Not that I could ever really be that. But at any rate to show I wasn't absolutely un-worthy. I wanted to do something.
Aldous Huxley
#52. Robespierre, crippled and blind, has yet to be healed to the knowledge that service - his desire - is a deed of savage-speaking gentleness, not soft-spoken savagery.
Tanith Lee
#53. I know what I want, and I know what needs to be done to make my performance better. So I do these little askings, about the lights and costumes. It's not the diva speaking. It's the artist who knows how it has to be done.
Anna Netrebko
#54. God did not appear to Abraham without speaking to him. When He came to Abraham, He called him. God spoke to Abraham. Calling means speaking. It is not a small thing to hear God's speaking.
Witness Lee
#55. I am a serial monogamist of sorts, and have been with my girlfriend for almost four years. In imagining my brain back to worlds where I might be around someone other sexed in that way and not know them that well, speaking out loud almost seems like requiring of demon language, or money spurting.
Blake Butler
#56. Here I am, the artist, the person, the black woman, and the stereotype. I'm using myself and it has nothing to do with my muses or other women. It has to do with me. You see parts of my body moving, very collage like, flashing, and not speaking, just laying on a couch, looking out at the viewer.
Mickalene Thomas
#57. I'm not suggesting that everyone should meditate, far from it. Meditation is for very few individuals. I'm speaking of something that is a powerful experience.
Frederick Lenz
#58. Eloquence in public assemblies is not the surest road to fame and preferment, at least unless it be used with great caution, very rarely, and with great reserve.
John Adams
#59. Personally speaking, growing up as a gay man before it was as socially acceptable as it is now, I knew what it was to feel different, to feel alienated and to feel not like everyone else. But the very same thing that made me monstrous to some people also empowered me and made me who I was.
John Logan
#60. They walked as old friends walk, without often speaking, sharing the kind of silence that is not so much silence as a kind of still communication.
Susan Cooper
#61. Take down the walls.
Otherwise you must live closely, in fear, building barricades against the unknown, saying prayers against the darkness, speaking verse of terror and tightness.
Otherwise you may never know hell, but you will not find heaven, either. You will not know fresh air and flying.
Lauren Oliver
#62. For the kind of thing that we were showing, the budget was sufficient. As we were speaking of in Haiti, we had not done that before in exactly this form and we had to have costumes for it.
Katherine Dunham
#63. Isn't the real scandal not that our religious leaders might be imagined walking across a road or talking as friends together in a bar, but rather that their followers are found speaking against one another as enemies, day after day in situation after situation?
Brian D. McLaren
#64. Relatively speaking, I know what my other deficiencies are. Cosmetically, I'm not 28 and stunning. The fact that NBC appreciates what I do means a great deal to me because I know that without my reporting skills and my experience and all of that, I might not have a fighting chance.
Michele Tafoya
#65. Speaking up is important. Yet to speak up without listening is like banging pots and pans together: Even if it gets you attention, it's not going to get you respect.
Gina Barreca
#66. What I say should always be prefaced with this: I'm not really politically articulate. I just try to be like Thomas Paine: what is common sense? So when I say these things to you, I am speaking from a humanist point of view. I just look around and see what's wrong.
Patti Smith
#67. I was never a villain on the stage. I always played strong, sympathetic types. My first stage role with a speaking part, believe it or not, was as a priest. It wasn't until I began acting in films that the producers and directors saw me primarily as a bizarre villain.
Conrad Veidt
#68. A fair woman shall not only command without authority but persuade without speaking.
Philip Sidney
#69. Powerful people initiate speech more often, talk more overall, and make more eye contact while they're speaking than powerless people do. When we feel powerful, we speak more slowly and take more time. We don't rush. We're not afraid to pause. We feel entitled to the time we're using.
Amy Cuddy
#70. It is not for nothing that the king of a commonwealth is called "Sire"; humanly speaking, of the callings of fatherhood and kingship, the deeper and more primordial is fatherhood.
J. Budziszewski
#71. That's politics, power: it's all verbal, a continuous blizzard of words. But it's not just speaking, it's making statements. It's action; it's doing something without doing anything.
Harry Mulisch
#72. I came to Berlin not to visit its museums and galleries, its operas, its theaters ... but for the sake of seeing and speaking with the world's greatest living man - Alexander von Humboldt.
Bayard Taylor
#73. The Muslim population in India is, largely speaking, not radicalised. From the beginning, they were always very secular-minded.
Salman Rushdie
#74. To wait, biblically speaking, is not to assume the worst, worry, make demands, or take control. Nor is waiting doing nothing. It is a sustained effort to stay focused on God through prayer and belief. To wait is to "rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for Him" (Psalm 37:7).
Max Lucado
#75. It was not the man's brain that was speaking; it was his larynx.
George Orwell
#76. Never tire of firmly speaking out in defense of life from its conception and do not be deterred from the commitment to defend the dignity of every human person with courageous determination. Christ is with you: be not afraid!
Pope John Paul II
#77. Shouting down and intimidating someone from speaking their mind is not exactly a Vermont town meeting value, nor should it be an American town meeting value.
Bernie Sanders
#78. In a cruel manner of speaking, this young woman may well have lost her head before she was born; it is certainly not on her shoulders at this stage of the game.
J.D. Salinger
#79. God will not punish you when you speak your mind, because he speaks through you if he truly lives in you.
Michael Bassey Johnson
#80. Bilingualism is not an imposition on the citizens. The citizens can go on speaking one language or six languages, or no languages if they so choose. Bilingualism is an imposition on the state and not the citizens.
Pierre Trudeau
#81. I have all the time in the world. I am in touch with the timeless. I am surrounded by infinity. When I think like that, it doesn't mean I'm going to miss my train, it just means that I'm not thinking about it right now because I'm speaking to you.
Deepak Chopra
#82. The perceived failings of leaders of other neutral or occupied European countries, including France, Spain, Sweden or Norway, or of the countries that fought alongside the Nazis, have not caught the public imagination in the English-speaking world in anything like the same way.
Clare O'Dea
#83. The first
sign of greatness is when a man does not attempt to look and act
great. Before you can call yourself a man at all, Kipling assures
us, you must not look too good nor talk too wise.
Dale Carnegie
#84. To hear men talk of metonomies, metaphors, and allegories, and other grammar words, would not one think they signified some rare and exotic form of speaking? And yet they are phrases that come near to the babble of my chambermaid. And
Michel De Montaigne
#85. The base that Donald Trump is speaking to are not that conservative, at least not the way conservatives have defined themselves.
Chris Hayes
#86. You live lies," Pattern said. "It gives you strength. But the truth . . . Without speaking truths you will not be able to grow, Shallan. I know this somehow.
Brandon Sanderson
#87. There is no other way of guarding oneself against flattery than by letting men understand that they will not offend you by speaking the truth; but when everyone can tell you the truth, you lose their respect.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#88. My dad came from Cuba when he was a teenager not speaking English. And I grew up here speaking Spanglish. That's the world in which I grew up, and that's a world in which a lot of second generation immigrants find themselves.
Ted Cruz
#89. Look, Sara. The way Andrew treated you was unconscionable. We all saw that, and I regret not speaking up on your behalf. But you have the choice to decide how you grow from it. If you're going to think every man is like him, you don't deserve Max. Max isn't that guy.
Christina Lauren
#90. I used to be as scared of public speaking as I was of sharks. Every time I teach I get an endorphin high off the fact that I did not have a panic attack. I teach and swim in order to measure my improvement as a human. I am no longer terrified of quite so many things.
Heidi Julavits
#91. Earnest in practicing the ordinary virtues, and careful in speaking about them, if, in his practice, he has anything defective, the superior man dares not but exert himself; and if, in his words, he has any excess, he dares not allow himself such license.
Confucius
#92. Failure so often hates the very sight of success. Speaking with successful men, I have noticed they speak in complimentary terms of other men who are succeeding. Their attitude is not one of envy, but of willingness to learn from others.
Napoleon Hill
#93. What good was speaking when I'd determined none of the world listened to one another, especially not when a woman was speaking.
Leanna Renee Hieber
#94. Not all of Derrida's writing is to everyone's taste. He had an irritating habit of overusing the rhetorical question, which lends itself easily to parody: 'What is it, to speak? How can I even speak of this? Who is this "I" who speaks of speaking?
Terry Eagleton
#95. It is a point that I repeat over and over again in teaching public speaking. It is not so much what you say as it is the tone and manner in which you say it that makes a lasting impression.
Napoleon Hill
#96. Let others know when they have hurt or angered you. By not speaking up when someone insults or mistreats you, you are inadvertently giving permission for him or her to continue to treat you in the same way in the future.
Beverly Engel
#97. Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth; when perfect sincerity is expected, perfect freedom must be allowed; nor has anyone who is apt to be angry when he hears the truth any cause to wonder that he does not hear it.
Tacitus
#98. I'm not even speaking to people any more; I just want to be reading my Kindle the whole time!
Sophie McShera
#99. Isn't the essential pillar of Catholicism papal infallibility? Well, then how can the church ever change its mind about anything unless God gets confused one day? Not all religions claim the direct authority of God speaking to their leader. You know, I'm an atheist, but I'm a Puritan atheist.
Dave Foley
#100. Astronautics, strictly speaking, will be concerned with voyages to other stars. Remarkably enough, to achieve such feats, we might not even have to leave the earth. It would suffice to accelerate the sun itself to a very high speed and let it drag all its planets with it.
Fritz Zwicky
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