So long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we are obliged to display in public.
Marquis de Sade

Some persons talk simply because they think sound is more manageable than silence.
Margaret Halsey

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.
Octavia Butler

Sometimes I wish that applause would come just a bit later, when it is so beautifully hushed that I feel like holding my breath in the silence of the end.
Emanuel Ax

Sometimes there is a greater lack of communication in facile talking than in silence.
Faith Baldwin

Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.
Henri Nouwen

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.
Jean Arp

Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth.
Emile M. Cioran

Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.
Thomas Carlyle

Speech is the small change of silence.
George Meredith

Strength is born in the deep silence of long-suffering hearts; not amid joy.
Arthur Helps

Strong efforts may be made to deny the place, to silence the authentic, but the spirit of things will break through that silence.
John Haynes

That man's silence is wonderful to listen to.
Thomas Hardy

The better the information it has, the better democracy works. Silence and secrecy are never good for it.
Kate Adie

The Browning love story? It is an ideal, all too rare, and yet I hardly think it strange. It would have been far stranger had the fates allowed those two brilliant passionate souls to beat themselves out in silence.
Marie Corelli

The correction of silence is what kills; when you know you have transgressed, and your friend says nothing, and avoids your eye.
Robert Louis Stevenson

The critical point is that the Constitution places the right of silence beyond the reach of government.
William O. Douglas

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

The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint.
Marianne Moore

The denial of our duty to act in this case is a denial of our right to act; and if we have no right to act, then may we well be termed the white slaves of the North, for like our brethren in bonds, we must seal our lips in silence and despair.
Angelina Grimke