Home » Blog » Quotes and Captions » Silence Quotes

Silence Quotes

Have you ever thought about how silence is inviting? Or how silence can be interpreted in different ways by different people? Or how silence can speak volumes?

Removing input to one of our senses – in this case, hearing – seems to enhance the abilities of our other senses.

Have a read-through of our collection of carefully-selected silence quotes – and make sure you find a quiet place to do so.

Best Silence Quotes

1.) 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

2.) Silence is better than unmeaning words.
Pythagoras

3.) Silence is true wisdom’s best reply.
Euripides

4.) Silence is a true friend who never betrays.
Confucius

5.) “I don’t think…” then you shouldn’t talk, said the Hatter.
Lewis Carroll

6.) There’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless.’ There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.
Arundhati Roy

Quotes About Silence.

Good Quiet Quotations

On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.
Mark Haddon

The predator wants your silence. It feeds their power, entitlement, and they want it to feed your shame.
Viola Davis

Silence makes idiots seem wise even for a minute.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Staying silent is like a 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

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

A nervous silence loosens tongues.
Jacqueline Carey

Quietude Insights

When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word silence, I destroy it.
Wisława Szymborska

Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven’t the answer to a question you’ve been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you’re alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.
Norton Juster

Funny Quotes About Being Quiet

Silence is golden when you can’t think of a good answer.
Muhammad Ali

You have a grand gift for silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.
Arthur Conan Doyle

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.
Khalil Gibran

Never miss a good chance to shut up.
Will Rogers

It is always assumed by the empty-headed, who chatter about themselves for want of something better, that people who do not discuss their affairs openly must have something to hide.
Honoré de Balzac

Silence is so freaking loud.
Sarah Dessen

Short Silence Quotes

In these silence quotes, the brevity of words makes it important to make each one count.

I decided it is better to scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.
Nadezhda Mandelstam

Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.
Charles de Gaulle

Silence is the best response to a fool.
Unknown

Be silent or let thy words be worth more than silence.
Pythagoras

My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.
Edith Sitwell

The cruelest lies are often told in silence.
Robert Louis Stevenson

Lying is done with words, and also with silence.
Adrienne Rich

Your silence will not protect you.
Audre Lorde

Wise Words For Tranquility

Three hundred years of humiliation, abuse, and deprivation cannot be expected to find voice in a whisper.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
George Eliot

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.
Leonardo da Vinci

It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie.
Victor Hugo

We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken a lifetime to learn. 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

I have heard the languages of apocalypse, and now I shall embrace the silence.
Neil Gaiman

Silence is a source of Great Strength.
Lao Tzu

Silence Sayings

Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.
William S. Burroughs

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 forever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.
Virginia Woolf

You are most powerful when you are most silent. People never expect silence.
Alison McGhee

Non-judgment quiets the internal dialogue, and this opens once again the doorway to creativity.
Deepak Chopra

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.
Ansel Adams

Silence is Golden Quotes.

About Life

Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?
Lawrence Durrell

Never assume that loud is strong and quiet is weak.
Unknown

Wise men, when in doubt whether to speak or to keep quiet, give themselves the benefit of the doubt, and remain silent.
Napoleon Hill

I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face-to-face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.
Henry Miller

One of the greatest attacks of the enemy is to make you busy, to make you hurried, to make you noisy, to make you distracted, to fill the people of God and the Church of God with so much noise and activity that there is no room for prayer. There is no room for being alone with God. There is no room for silence.
Paul Washer

Seeing her sitting there unresponsive makes me realize that silence has a sound.
Jodi Picoult

Peace and Quiet

In silence, there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.
Rumi

Words can be twisted into any shape. Promises can be made to lull the heart and seduce the soul. In the final analysis, words mean nothing. They are labels we give things in an effort to wrap our puny little brains around their underlying natures when ninety-nine percent of the time the totality of the reality is an entirely different beast. The wisest man is the silent one. Examine his actions. Judge him by them.
Karen Marie Moning

Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it.
Khaled Hosseini

Be silent and safe — silence never betrays you; Be true to your word and your work and your friend; Put least trust in him who is foremost to praise you, Nor judge of a road till it draw to the end.
John Boyle O’Reilly

When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Power in Silence

Always ask yourself: “What will happen if I say nothing?
Kamand Kojouri

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

Talk, talk, talk: the utter and heartbreaking stupidity of words.
William Faulkner

As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment.
John Steinbeck

May my silences become more accurate.
Theodore Roethke

Space and silence are two aspects of the same thing. The same nothing. They are externalization of inner space and inner silence, which is stillness: the infinitely creative womb of all existence.
Eckhart Tolle

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 Is Golden

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.
Elbert Hubbard

In the silence of the heart, God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence.
Mother Teresa

We sit and talk quietly, with long lapses of silence and I am aware of the stream that has no language, coursing beneath the quiet heaven of your eyes which has no speech.
William Carlos Williams

I don’t want to be married just to be married. I can’t think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can’t talk to, or worse, someone I can’t be silent with.
Mary Ann Shaffer

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 be friends you’ll never be and you need not waste time in trying.
L.M. Montgomery

Silence fell between us. This was a common occurrence whenever we’re alone. When you’re comfortable with someone, you don’t need to always fill the void with noise. I liked it when we would just be.
Elizabeth Eulberg

Heartfelt Quotes on Quietness

The splendid thing about falling apart silently… is that you can start over as many times as you like.
Sanober Khan

What keeps my heart awake is colorful silence.
Claude Monet

There are in life a few moments so beautiful, that even words are a sort of profanity.
Diana Palmer

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me.
Haruki Murakami

My dear, I have nothing to say. My heart burns like the evening sky.
Sanober Khan

There is an ocean of silence between us… and I am drowning in it.
Ranata Suzuki

By MJ O’Halloran

MJ writes about relationships, family, and culture.

Etcetera

You’re on our Silence Quotes page.

You might like:

Conversation Starters and Conversation Topics

Enlightening Brené Brown Quote

Self-Care Quotes and Captions

Women Empowerment Quotes