Here’s a compilation of 50 powerful quotes about silence from some of the best writers, thinkers and leaders.
Learn more about experiencing silence in your own home by checking out How to Soundproof a Doorway 2019 – 12 Affordable Things You Can Do!
Powerful Quotes About Silence
1. The word ‘listen’ contains the same letters as the word ‘silent.’ – Alfred Brendel
2. I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me. – Albert Einstein
3. Sometimes the silence can be like thunder. – Bob Dylan
4. All I insist on, and nothing else, is that you should show the whole world that you are not afraid. Be silent, if you choose; but when it is necessary, speak—and speak in such a way that people will remember it. – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
5. Speech is great, but silence is greater. – Thomas Carlyle, Essays, “Characteristics of Shakespeare.”
6. Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn whatever state I am in, therein to be content. – Helen Keller
7. In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is a misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood. – Henry David Thoreau
8. It was so darn quiet you could hear your hair grow. – Robert A. Heinlein, Farmer in the Sky
9. There are grammatical errors even in his silence. – Stanisław Jerzy Lec, Unkempt Thoughts
10. Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact. – George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such
11. Silence slammed in like a thunderclap. – Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
12. Silence fertilizes the deep place where personality grows. A life with a peaceful center can weather all storms. – Norman Vincent Peale
13. Silence is the great teacher, and to learn its lessons you must pay attention to it. There is no substitute for the creative inspiration, knowledge, and stability that come from knowing how to contact your core of inner silence. The great Sufi poet Rumi wrote, Only let the moving waters calm down, and the sun and moon will be reflected on the surface of your being.” – Deepak Chopra
14. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. – Martin Luther King, Jr.
15. Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled. – Horace
16. The saying is true “The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.” – William Shakespeare, Henry V
17. One person speaking up makes more noise than a thousand people who remain silent. – Thom Harnett
18. Silence is a gift. Learn to value its essence. – Anon
19. The tree of silence bears the fruit of peace. – Proverb
20. If everyone thought before they spoke, the silence would be deafening. – George Barzan
21. When people refuse to speak out for too long, it’s like water that’s stagnant and starts to rot! – August Strindberg, The Ghost Sonata
22. Silence never betrays you. – John Boyle O’Reilly, Rules of the Road
23. When two people understand each other, what wonderful things they can convey in silence. – John Faniel Barry, “Silence,” Reactions and Other Essays
24. If silence is golden like they say it be / If silence is golden then how rich I must be? – Lynn Anderson, “If Silence Is Golden”
25. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it. – Wislawa Szymborska, Poems New and Collected
26. If silence is good for the wise, how much better is it for the foolish! – Ivan Panin, Thoughts
27. Silence is a great peacemaker. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Table Talk”
28. Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute. – Josh Billings
29. A fence to wisdom is silence. – Akiba ben Joseph, Pirkei Avot, 3:17.
30. Silence is more eloquent than words. – Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History
31. We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature—trees, flowers, grass—grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. We need silence to be able to touch souls. – Mother Teresa
32. Everything that’s created comes out of silence. Thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Words come out of the void. Your very essence emerged from emptiness. All creativity requires some stillness. – Wayne Dyer
33. Sticks and stones are hard on bones aimed with angry art. Words can sting like anything but silence breaks the heart. – Phyllis McGinley
34. Open your mouth only if what you are going to say is more beautiful than the silence. – Spanish Proverb
35. Silence is like a river of grace inviting us to leap unafraid into its beckoning depths. It is dark and mysterious in the waters of grace. Yet in the silent darkness, we are given new eyes. In the heart of the divine, we can see more clearly who we are. We are renewed and cleansed in this river of silence. There are those among you who fear the Great Silence. It is a foreign land to you. Sometimes it is good to leap into the unknown. Practice leaping. – Macrina Wiederkehr
36. There is a silence, the child of love, which expresses everything, and proclaims more loudly than the tongue is able to do; there are movements that are involuntary proofs of what the soul feels. – Vittorio Alfieri
37. Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule. – Thomas Carlyle
38. Silence is a choice, it is not a secondary action, but a conscious decision made in a moment. This is not always something that we want to acknowledge. However, it is an important reality that we have the opportunity to confront head-on. – Melissa Hurley
39. In truth, it would seem that living in the incessant din of a Calvinistic country, the best course for thoughtful and serious men was to be silent. – Walter Bagehot
40. What scientists have discovered is that silence allows an area of the brain, called the hippocampus, to do what it does best. And since the hippocampus is where our memories are stored and where we process our emotions … it is critical to learning. Silence gives this really important part of the brain the opportunity to process, consolidate and strengthen itself. – Justin Coulson
41. Silence is the only weapon by which such victims can conquer; it baffles the Cossack charges of envy, the savage skirmishings of suspicion; it does at times give victory, crushing and complete—for what is more complete than silence? it is absolute; it is one of the attributes of infinity. – Honore de Balzac
42. It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox. – Nicholas Sparks
43. I did the only thing I knew how to do: I built my own walls of silence to disguise my desperation and what later came to be recognized and diagnosed as depression. – Sharon E. Rainey
44. Nowadays silence is looked on as odd and most of my race has forgotten the beauty of meaning much by saying little. Now tongues work all day by themselves with no help from the mind. – Toni Morrison
45. Living as we do in an age of noise and bluster, success is now measured accordingly. We must all be seen, and heard, and on the air. – Daphne du Maurier
46. How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself. – Virginia Woolf
47. 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
48. Staying silent is like slow-growing cancer to the soul and a trait of a true coward. There is nothing intelligent about not standing up for yourself. You may not win every battle. However, everyone will at least know what you stood for—you. – Shannon L. Alder
49. The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody. – Albert Camus
50. It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. – Nicholas Sparks
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