Quotes About Speaking And Silence

#1. Language consists in equal parts of speaking and silence.

Eugene H. Peterson

#2. To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking - and since it cannot, in order to become its echo I have, in a way, to silence it. I bring to this incessant speech the decisiveness, the authority of my own silence.

Maurice Blanchot

#3. Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#4. When you've gone to silence and are trying way too hard to convince yourself that you've done the right thing, you might want to examine whether you are intentionally minimizing the cost of not speaking up and exaggerating the risks of doing so.

Kerry Patterson

#5. Another moment or two of suffocated silence, and Hunt swallowed hard before speaking in a rusty-sounding voice. I probably shouldn't ask. But what the hell are you doing?

Lisa Kleypas

#6. And, as a general rule, it is more advisable to show your intelligence by saying nothing than by speaking out; for silence is a matter of prudence whilst speech has something in it of vanity

Arthur Schopenhauer

#7. Sometimes I will spend two or three days not speaking to anyone outside of the immediate family when they come home, and then I find that I've been emailing like fury. Once you give in to that silence, it's quite nice.

Anne Enright

#8. Courage isn't simply a matter of leading charges: sometimes it consists in speaking up, sometimes in stoic silence, sometimes in forging ahead, sometimes in circumspection, and sometimes in nothing less than preserving our own humanity.

Elizabeth Samet

#9. The eloquence of one stimulates all the rest, some up to the speaking-point, and all others to a degree that makes them good receivers and conductors, and they avenge themselves for their enforced silence by increased loquacity on their return.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#10. Your voice
in this being unable to move away
from my gaze
things dispossess me
make of me a ship on a river of stones
if your voice is not
rain alone in my feverish silence
you unbind my eyes
and please
may you never stop
speaking
ever

Alejandra Pizarnik

#11. I think silence is one of the failures of people today. When they see an injustice or intolerance, and they stay silent - that's the worst thing.

Anonymous

#12. There are many kinds of silences and not all signify absence or vacancy....Those moments are but temporary ebbs before the flow of meaning rushes in to fill the space....God may be speaking 'in ways we have yet to recognize as speech.

Terryl L. Givens

#13. Prudent is he who can keep silent that part of truth which may be untimely, and by not speaking it, does not spoil the truth of what he said.

Pope John XXIII

#14. I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.

Audre Lorde

#15. If the prudence of reserve and decorum dictates silence in some circumstances, in others prudence of a higher order may justify us in speaking our thoughts.

Edmund Burke

#16. Tut, tut! I have often admonished my pupils to count ten before speaking. Were I you, Mr. Philander, I should count at least a thousand, and then maintain a discreet silence.

Edgar Rice Burroughs

#17. And the too much of my speaking:
heaped up round the little
crystal dressed in the style of your silence.

Paul Celan

#18. Children live in a world of dreams and imagination, a world of aliveness ... There is a voice of wonder and amazement inside all of us; but we grow to realize we can no longer hear it, and we live in silence. It isn't that God stopped speaking; it is that our lives became louder.

Mike Yaconelli

#19. My silence never means I don't have nothing to talk, but it was important who were audiences and what was the topic.

Ali Rezavand Zayeri

#20. Silence is the invisibility of talking. I'd take half an argument over half a silence any day. And I'd take peace and quiet over a full-blown argument any other day, unless it's Tuesday.

Will Advise

#21. Silence is pure and holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking.

Nicholas Sparks

#22. At times it does not really matter what language you are speaking, especially when you are emotional and try to reach other hearts. To transcend emotion, silence is the best language.

Abu Sufyan Ibn Harb

#23. In the end, it was the secrets that held me hostage and fuelled my depression, but, once released, emancipation - from fear, shame, guilt and judgement - was finally possible.

B.G. Bowers

#24. I worked it through with pride,I almost spoke without words, and i'm masterly at speaking without words.All my life I have spoken without words, and I have passed through whole tragedies on my own account without words

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#25. Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly.

Mahatma Gandhi

#26. I'm a master of speaking silently - all my life I've spoken silently and I've lived through entire tragedies in silence.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#27. I have always been on speaking terms with God, especially now. God and I just had a few weeks of silence. 'Tis over now.

Jennifer Hudson Taylor

#28. Yet accurate speech about anything, and especially about God, is in fact a rhythm of silence and speech, speaking and listening.

Ellen F. Davis

#29. Come to me in the silence of the night,
Come to me in the speaking silence of a dream.
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright as sunlight on a stream.
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

Christina Rossetti

#30. One develops an instinct for letting silence do the heavy lifting. In the three, four, five seconds that passed without either of us speaking, the many ways the conversation could go came and went like time-lapse film of flowers blooming and dying.

Glen Duncan

#31. Ultimately when I gave up the use of motorized vehicles, I walked everywhere, from town to town, across states and two continents. When I stopped talking, I mean literally I stopped speaking. I took a complete vow of silence.

John Francis

#32. And when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive

Audre Lorde

#33. why talk and say the unsaid words in haste when silence can speak the unspoken words?

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

#34. The allegation that English girls had no conversation must be true; but theirs was a SPEAKING silence. Their eyes and smiles were eloquent! She hoped it would teach their own girls that they need not chatter like magpies.

Edith Wharton

#35. Stigma's power lies in silence. The silence that persists when discussion and action should be taking place. The silence one imposes on another for speaking up on a taboo subject, branding them with a label until they are rendered mute or preferably unheard.

M.B. Dallocchio

#36. Simon and Garfunkel were prophetic. The Sound of Silence certainly applies today with so many people communicating through electronic devices. It isn't uncommon to see kids standing side by side talking without speaking. We bow and pray to the back-lit gods we made.

Mary Russel

#37. Quite often it's not about what is said, but what isn't. And even when it's spoken, read between the lines. Listening with the heart is just as important as hearing with the mind.

T.F. Hodge

#38. I tend to avoid people who always have something to say ... and those who expect me to always have something to say.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

#39. The two friends stood for a few moments on the windy street corner, not speaking a word, as two travelers, who have lost their way, sometimes stand and admit their perplexity in silence. (O Pioneers!)

Willa Cather

#40. If we knew how often the obedience of others is affected by our own, and how often our stepping forth soon brings forth a whole platton of helpers, and how often our speaking forth soon creates a chorus - we would be even more ashamed of our slackess and our silence.

Neal A. Maxwell