A Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Speech is better than silence; silence is better than speech.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quote Topics

Better Silence Silence Is Speech Than

Quote Author

Ralph Waldo Emerson
American - Philosopher
May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882

Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better for speech than for stationery.

Lord Acton

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

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

Let there be but two occasions for speech - when the subject is one which you thoroughly know and when it is one on which you are compelled to speak. On these occasions alone is speech better than silence; on all others, it is better to be silent than to speak.

Isocrates

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

Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent.

Dionysius I of Syracuse

Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech.

Plutarch

My poems are more my silence than my speech. Just as music is a kind of quiet. Sounds are needed only to unveil the various layers of silence.

Anna Kamienska

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

George Herbert

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 is most powerful. Speech is always less powerful than silence.

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

It is better to sit alone than in company with the bad, and it is better still to sit with the good than alone. It is better to speak to a seeker of knowledge than to remain silent, but silence is better than idle words.