Silence Quotes
These silence quotes explore the power of serenity, calmness and inner peace.
You’ll find inspiration in the thoughts and ideas of famous authors, philosophers, poets, and more, on how to achieve tranquility through the power of silence.
Best silence quotes and sayings
Here are some of the best quotes and sayings about silence.
1. Silence quotes for success
Work hard in silence, let your success make the noise.
Frank Ocean
Silence is a source of great strength.
Lao Tzu
Successful people always have two things on their lips. Silence and a smile.
Unknown
By silence, I hear other men’s imperfections and conceal my own.
Zeno
Well-timed silence is the most commanding expression.
Mark Helprin
Quiet and silence is a form of power. Thoughtful and wise people are not talkative people.
Dr T.P. Chia
The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.
Mark Twain
If I could I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results.
Emily Brontë
The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
Albert Einstein
The most significant conversations of our lives occur in silence.
Simon Van Booy
2. Silence wisdom quotes
Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.
Francis Bacon
Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech.
Plutarch
Your silence will not protect you.
Audre Lorde
As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.
Benjamin Franklin
A fool is known by his speech; and a wise man by silence.
Pythagoras
When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
In Silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.
Rumi
Speak only if it improves upon the silence.
Mahatma Gandhi
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.
Deepak Chopra
Deep sayings about silence
Silence is so freaking loud.
Sarah Dessen
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence.
Marianne Moore
Seeing her sitting there unresponsive makes me realize that silence has a sound.
Jodi Picoult
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
Thoughts works in silence; so does virtue. One might erect statues to silence.
Thomas Carlyle
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.
Chaim Potok
Silence can often be more disturbing than noise, it reveals the complicated mechanism of our thoughts.
José Rodrigues Miguéis
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3. Silence quotes about life
A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.
Bertrand Russell
If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet… maybe we could understand something.
Federico Fellini
Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?
Lawrence Durrell
Into the void of silence, into the empty space of nothing, the joy of life is unfurled.
C. S. Lewis
Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
Benjamin Franklin
Be silent as to services you have rendered, but speak of favors you have received.
Epictetus
The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.
Baruch Spinoza
I decided it is better to scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.
Nadezhda Mandelstam
The cruelest lies are often told in silence.
Robert Louis Stevenson
It is better either to be silent or to say things of more value than silence. Sooner throw a pearl at hazard than an idle or useless word; and do not say a little in many words but a great deal in a few.
Pythagoras
4. Silence quotes about love
Silence is pure and holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking.
Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook
Not words.
nor laughter.
but rather someone
who will fall in love
with your silence.
Sanober Khan
There is an ocean of silence between us… and I am drowning in it.
Ranata Suzuki
I wait
with silent passion
for one gesture
one glance
from you
Rumi
It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.
Mahatma Gandhi
About relationships
He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.
Elbert Hubbard
Lying is done with words, and also with silence.
Adrienne Rich
Sticks and stones are hard on bones aimed with angry art. Words can sting like anything but silence breaks the heart.
Phyllis Mcginley
About friendship
If you can sit in silence with a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, you and that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you’ll never be and you need not waste time in trying.
L.M. Montgomery
About respect
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
John Morley
We have two ears and one mouth, therefore we should listen twice as much as we speak.
Zeno
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5. Funny silence quotes
Silence is golden when you can’t think of a good answer.
Muhammad Ali
God is silent. Now if only man would shut up.
Woody Allen
Silence makes idiots seem wise even for a minute.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving in words evidence of the fact.
George Eliot
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
Robert Benchley
Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.
Publilius Syrus
Cute sayings
Never miss a good chance to shut up.
Will Rogers
My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.
Edith Sitwell
One nice thing about silence is that it can’t be repeated.
Gary Cooper
6. Short silence quotes
These short quotes and sayings are perfect for Instagram captions.
May my silences become more accurate.
Theodore Roethke
Silence is the unbearable repartee.
Alexander Theroux
Let silence take you to the core of life.
Rumi
Your very silence shows you agree.
Europides
Silence is a great peacemaker.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Most of us know how to say nothing; few of us know when.
Unknown
The best cure for the body is a quiet mind.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Better to trip with the feet than the tongue.
Zeno
Saying nothing sometimes says the most.
Emily Dickinson
A fair request should be followed by the deed in silence.
Dante Alighieri
Be silent or let thy words be worth more than silence.
Pythagoras
Silence is the mother of truth.
Benjamin Disraeli
Never say anything that doesn’t improve on silence.
Richard Yates
Speech is of time, silence is of eternity.
Thomas Carlyle
Quiet persons are welcome everywhere.
Thomas Fuller
Silence is safer than speech.
Epictetus
Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Silence is an answer to a wise man.
Euripides
It is difficult to keep quiet if you have nothing to do.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The good and the wise lead quiet lives.
Euripides
7. Inspirational quotes
Silence is a true friend that never betrays.
Confucius
Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment.
Henry David Thoreau
Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us without words?
Marcel Marceau
Be silent and safe — silence never betrays you.
John Boyle O’Reilly
Sometimes it’s best to stay quiet. The silence can speak volumes without ever saying a word.
Unknown
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
Xenocrates
Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men’s imperfections, and conceal your own.
George Bernard Shaw
Real action is in silent moments.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Motivational sayings
Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.
Josh Billings
Silence is sometimes the best answer.
Dalai Lama
Don’t waste words on people deserve your silence. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can say is nothing at all.
Mandy Hale
He who does not know how to be silent will not know how to speak.
Ausonius
Listen to silence. It has so much to say.
Rumi
I often regret that I have spoken; never that I have been silent.
Publilius Syrus
Wise men, when in doubt whether to speak or to keep quiet, give themselves the benefit of the doubt, and remain silent.
Napoleon Hill
8. Spiritual silence quotes
True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit. What sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.
William Penn
Within us is the soul of the whole, the wise silence, the universal beauty, the eternal One.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.
Ansel Adams
Such silence has an actual sound, the sound of disappearance.
Suzanne Finnamore
Noise creates illusions. Silence brings truth.
Maxime Lagacé
Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
About peace
The tree of silence bears the fruit of peace.
Proverb
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
Max Ehrmann
Through the portals of silence, the healing sun of wisdom and peace will shine upon you.
Paramahansa Yogananda
There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
Since long I’ve held silence a remedy for harm.
Aeschylus
About meditation
Sound is our mind, silence is our being.
Osho
All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.
Blaise Pascal
People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul.
Carl Jung
Zen sayings
Silence is a true friend who never betrays.
Confucius
Only silence perfects silence.
A.R. Ammons
Silence isn’t empty, it’s full of answers.
Unknown
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
A wise man once said nothing.
Unknown
About nature
In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.
Robert Lynd
Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.
Leonora Carrington
The world’s continual breathing is what we hear and call silence.
Clarice Lispector
I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
9. Famous silence quotes
Silence is golden.
English proverb
Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
Abraham Lincoln
In the silence of the heart God speaks.
Mother Teresa
The silence, often of pure innocence, persuades where speaking fails.
William Shakespeare
As far as I’m concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.
Albert Einstein
What keeps my heart awake is colorful silence.
Claude Monet
Silence is argument carried on by other means.
Che Guevara
Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.
George Bernard Shaw
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Martin Luther King Jr.
To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
Abraham Lincoln
From songs
Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk to you again.
Simon and Garfunkel, The Sound of Silence
Skies are crying,
I am watching,
Catching teardrops in my hands.
Only silence, as it’s ending,
Like we never had a chance.
Do you have to make me feel
Like there’s nothing left of me?
Demi Lovato, Skyscraper
From authors
Listen closely… the eternal hush of silence goes on and on throughout all this, and has been going on, and will go on and on. This is because the world is nothing but a dream and is just thought of and the everlasting eternity pays no attention to it.
Jack Kerouac
Silence is of different kinds, and breathes different meanings.
Charlotte Brontë
Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.
William S. Burroughs
most people are perfectly afraid of silence
e.e cummings
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
It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie.
Victor Hugo
And silence. She liked the silence most of all. The silence in which the body, senses, the instincts, are more alert, more powerful, more sensitized, live a more richly perfumed and intoxication life, instead of transmuting into thoughts, words, into exquisite abstractions, mathematics of emotion in place of violent impact, the volcanic eruptions of fever, lust and delight.
Anaïs Nin
The true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.
Edgar Allan Poe
From books and literature
You have a grand gift for silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes
When a question has no correct answer, there is only one honest response. The gray area between yes and no. Silence.
Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code
You misinterpret everything, even the silence.
Franz Kafka, The Castle
From poetry
Green was the silence, wet was the light,
the month of June trembled like a butterfly.
Pablo Neruda
And the message of the yew tree is blackness —
blackness and silence.
Sylvia Plath
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Stars open among the lilies.
Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?
This is the silence of astounded souls.
Sylvia Plath
10. Silence proverbs
Silence is a cure for grief.
Arabian proverb
Wisdom consists of ten parts: nine parts silence and one part a few words.
Arabian proverb
Silence is a fence around wisdom.
German proverb
Silence makes no mistakes.
French proverb
Open your mouth only if what you are going to say is more beautiful than the silence.
Spanish proverb
The fruit of silence is tranquility.
Arabian proverb
Even silence is an answer.
Romanian proverb
Silence gives rise to peace and with peace comes security.
African proverb
Silence is more than just a lack of words.
Egyptian proverb
The spoken word sometimes loses what silence has won.
Spanish proverb
We hope you enjoyed reading these inspiring silence quotes and sayings. Here are more inspirational quotes you might like:
By Greg Johnson | Published 3/22/2023
