Saintliness is also a temptation.
Jean Anouilh
1. "Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time."
Thomas Carlyle, "Critical and Miscellaneous Essays"
Other categories: Time and Passing
2. "A man's silence is wonderful to listen to."
Thomas Hardy
3. "Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn."
George Bernard Shaw, "Back to Methuselah"
Other categories: Manners and Ethics
4. "Few speeches which have produced an electrical effect on an audience can bear the colourless photography of a printed record."
Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl Rosebery, "The Life of William Pitt"
5. "Silence alone is respectable and respected. I believe God to be silence."
Henry Brooks Adams
Other categories: God and Religion
6. "Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unhewn marble of great sculpture. The silent bear no witness against themselves."
Aldous Huxley, "Point Counter Point"
7. "Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Other categories: Good and Evil
8. "Silence is a text easy to misread."
Alfred Angelo Attanasio, "The Eagle and the Sword"
9. "Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine."
Fran Lebowitz
Other categories: Health and Alcohol
10. "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
Martin Luther King
Other categories: Friendship and Hostility
11. "As was his language so was his life."
Seneca the Younger
Other categories: Marriage
12. "Talk low, talk slow, and don't talk too much."
John Wayne
Other categories: Art and Culture
13. "Words without actions are the assassins of idealism."
Herbert Hoover
Other categories: Various
14. "A fool is like all other men as long as he remains silent."
Danish proverb
Other categories: Wisdom and Stupidity
15. "Married couples tell each other a thousand things without speech."
Chinese proverb
Other categories: Marriage
16. "A man's ruin lies in his tongue."
Egyptian proverb
Other categories: Defeates and Mistakes
17. " I have often regretted my speech, never my silence."
Publilius Syrus, "Sentences"
Other categories: Sorrow and Nostalgia
18. "If only our great thinkers could learn to talk, and our great talkers could learn to think."
Ashleigh Brilliant
Other categories: Intellect, Judgement
19. "If dogs could talk, perhaps we would find it as hard to get along with them as we do with people."
Karel Čapek
Other categories: Human -:- Nature and Animals
20. "There were grammatical errors even in his silence."
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
Other categories: Defeates and Mistakes
21. "A wise person has something to say, a fool has to say something."
(?)
Other categories: Wisdom and Stupidity
22. "The eye tells what the tongue would hide."
Chief Joseph
23. "The silence of a wise man is always meaningful."
Leo Strauss
Other categories: Wisdom and Stupidity
24. "Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them."
(?)
25. "The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting."
Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
26. "Speech is a mirror of the soul: as a man speaks, so is he."
Publilius Syrus, "Sentences"
27. "Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own."
Carol Burnett
28. "A diplomat is someone who can speak without saying anything."
(?)
Other categories: Politics and Diplomacy
29. "An open mind does not always require an open mouth."
(?)
Other categories: Intellect, Judgement
30. "The eyes of men speak words the tongue cannot pronounce."
Native American proverb
31. "Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence."
Robert Fripp
Other categories: Art and Culture
32. "One picture is worth ten thousand words."
Frederick R. Barnard
Other categories: Art and Culture
33. "Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it."
Robert Lee Frost
34. "When you open a door, don't forget to close it. Treat your mouth accordingly."
Jewish proverb
35. "The word listen contains the same letters as the word silent."
Alfred Brendel
36. "When a woman is speaking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes."
Victor Hugo
Other categories: Woman and Man
37. "Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."
Winston Churchill
Other categories: Bravery and Fear
38. "Women like silent men. They think they're listening."
Marcel Achard
Other categories: Woman and Man
39. "Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind."
Rudyard Kipling
40. "After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."
Aldous Huxley, "Music at Night"
Other categories: Art and Culture
41. "Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker."
George Eliot, "Daniel Deronda"
Other categories: Manners and Ethics
42. "If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z ; X is work, Y is play, and Z is keeping your mouth shut."
Albert Einstein
Other categories: Success and Fame
43. "Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving in words evidence of the fact."
George Eliot
44. "It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well, nor the judgement to hold their tongues."
Jean de La Bruyere
Other categories: Intellect, Judgement
45. "People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little."
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Other categories: Wisdom and Stupidity
46. "Words become luminous when the poet's finger has passed over them its phosphorescence."
Joseph Joubert
Other categories: Art and Culture
47. "To be outspoken is easy when you do not wait to speak the complete truth."
Rabindranath Tagore
Other categories: Truth and Falsity
48. "Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use."
Samuel Butler
49. "Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death."
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Other categories: Joy and Sadness
50. "Nature has given us two ears but only one mouth."
Benjamin Disraeli
2007, collected and compiled by Kazimierz Matan
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