A Quote by C. S. Lewis

I have often repented of speech but hardly ever of silence.

C. S. Lewis

Quote Topics

Ever Hardly Often Silence Speech

Quote Author

C. S. Lewis
British - Writer
November 29, 1898 - November 22, 1963

More have repented speech then silence. [More have repented speech than silence.]

George Herbert

I have often repented of having spoken. I have never repented of silence.

Henry Suso

Silence is never-ending speech. Vocal speech obstructs the other speech of silence. In silence one is in intimate contact with the surroundings. Language is only a medium for communicating one's thoughts to another. Silence is ever speaking.

Ramana Maharshi

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together ... Speech is too often ... the act of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal ... Speech is of Time, silence is of Eternity ... It is idle to think that, by means of words, any real communication can ever pass from one man to another.

Maurice Maeterlinck

The mark of solitude is silence, as speech is the mark of community. Silence and speech have the same inner correspondence and difference as do solitude and community. One does not exist without the other. Right speech comes out of silence, and right silence comes out of speech.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better, Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.

Thomas Carlyle

Hardly ever can a youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no matter how much money there be in his pocket, can he ever learn to dress like a gentleman-born. The merchants offer their wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest swell, but he simply cannot buy the right things.

William James

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.

Xenocrates

As the Swiss inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden,- "Speech is silvern, Silence is golden;" or, as I might rather express it, Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity.

John Keats

Silence often expresses 'more powerfully than speech the verdict and judgment of society.

Benjamin Disraeli

Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest.

George Eliot

Silence is the Mother of Truth, for the silent man was ever to be trusted, while the man ever ready with speech was never taken seriously.

Luther Standing Bear

Conversation was never begun at once, nor in a hurried manner. No one was quick with a question, no matter how important, and no one was pressed for an answer. A pause giving time for thought was the truly courteous way of beginning and conducting a conversation. Silence was meaningful with the Lakota, and his granting a space of silence to the speech-maker and his own moment of silence before talking was done in the practice of true politeness and regard for the rule that, "thought comes before speech."

Luther Standing Bear

To marry for love were no reproachful thing if we did not see that of ten thousand couples that do it, hardly one can be brought for an example that it may be done and not repented afterwards.