Silence Communication Quotes & Sayings

In a society so estranged from animals as ours, we often fail to credit them with any form of language. If we do, it comes under the heading of communication rather than speech. And yet, the great silence we have imposed on the rest of life contains innumerable forms of expression. Where does our own language come from but this unfathomed store that characterizes innumerable species?
We are now more than halfway removed from what the unwritten word meant to our ancestors, who believed in the original, primal word behind all manifestations of the spirit. You sang because you were answered. The answers come from life around you. Prayers, chants, and songs were also responses to the elements, to the wind, the sun and stars, the Great Mystery behind them. Life on earth springs from a collateral magic that we rarely consult. We avoid the unknown as if we were afraid that contact would lower our sense of self-esteem. — John Hay

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

Silence often speaks louder than words. To be heard is nice to be understood is divine. — Truth Devour

Silence is one great art of conversation. — William Hazlitt

The contact between beings is established only by mute presence, by apparent non-communication, by that mysterious and wordless exchange which resembles inward prayer. — Emil Cioran

There are times when silence is the most sacred of responses. — Eugene Kennedy

No writer in our time has been more isolated than Kafka, and yet few have achieved communication as well as he did. — Eugenio Montale

In Maine we have a saying that there's no point in speaking unless you can improve on silence. — Edmund Muskie

A month passed in silence and then came an email asking if Qayennat would care to further amend, fortify or prune various sections of her proposal; Like all communication for them so far, this was well written and polite but abhorrent in its covert attempt to stamp out anything like love, to turn passion into hot air. She wanted to tell them as much, inviting them to take their stuffy foundation and stuff it up their backside — Anjum Hasan

A heart worth loving is one you understand, even in silence. — Shannon L. Alder

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 Medicine Man, taking his music with him, is passing quietly into the Great Silence, where the old songs were "Received in Dreams" by "inner-plane communication." — Frances Densmore

Silence isn't golden and it surely doesn't mean consent, so start practicing the art of communication. — T.D. Jakes

It just took some people a little longer than others to realize how few words they needed to get by, how much of life they could negotiate in silence. — Tom Perrotta

Are all of us the same, I wonder, navigating our lives by interpreting the silences between words spoken, analysing the returning echoes of our memory in order to chart the terrain, in order to make sense of the world around us? — Tan Twan Eng

When you approach something to photograph it, first be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence. Then don't leave until you have captured its essence. — Minor White

If you listen closely, silence can be deafening. — Truth Devour

She said she knew we were safe with you, and always would be, because once, when she asked you to, you'd given up the thing you most wanted."
Archer received this strange communication in silence. His eyes remained unseeingly fixed on the thronged sunlit square below the window. At length he said in a low voice: "She never asked me. — Edith Wharton

Silence comes in two varieties: One that nourishes and comforts; another that chokes, smothers, and isolates. Solitary confinement is the worst kind of imprisonment we can inflict on fellow humans, and if you are forced to keep silent about some dark secret, you live in solitary confinement. Without the bridge of communication connecting you to other human beings, you can't share your burdens, can't receive comfort, can't confirm that you still belong. Silence is the abyss that separates you from hope. — Martha Beck

Silence is the language of the cosmos. From the smallest stone to the sun itself, they all communicate through silence, greatly rich with meaning and deep, very deep. In order to understand it, we need to have a special mind. — Anu Lal

In the silence that is his chosen medium of communication and telling others about it in words. Is there no way not to be the sport of reason ? — R.S. Thomas

We sat and drank in silence. It was something I appreciated about Jesse. He didn't feel the need to fill every moment with talk or some sort of silly exchange. — Ruta Sepetys

I remember receiving hate mail saying, "Tell this talking Trappist who took a vow of silence to shut up!" Though silence is a traditional part of their lives, Trappists take no such vow. Maintaining silence (to increase contemplation) does not by itself rule out communication (which they do in sign language). I had an answer for the hate-mongers: "Writing is a form of contemplation. — Thomas Merton

Silence is golden when it's called for. Silence can be deadly
when it's not called for — Meryl Runion

Silence (in a relationship) is never your friend. Communication is the pathway to healing and growth — Ilya Atani

Simply minding one's own business is more offensive than being intrusive. Without ever saying a word one can make a person feel less-than. — Criss Jami

Falling silent should be cultivated, the way the woods fall silent in the snow. Messages you can't send any other way can be heard. — Phyllis Theroux

But despite its shared nature, language is also dangerous, a potentially isolating enterprise. Not all players are equal. In fact, Wittgenstein was by no means always a successful participant himself, frequently experiencing extreme difficulty in communication and expression. In an essay on fear and public language, the critic Rei Terada describes a scene repeated throughout Wittgenstein's life, in which he would begin to stammer while attempting to address a group of colleagues. Eventually, his stuttering would give way to a tense silence, during which he would struggle mutely with his thoughts, gesticulating all the while with his hands, as if he was still speaking audibly. — Olivia Laing

There are some things which a man never speaks of, which are much finer kept silent about. To the highest communications we only lend a silent ear. — Henry David Thoreau

America is a noisy culture, unlike, say, Finland, which values silence. Individualism, dominant in the U.S. and Germany, promotes the direct, fast-paced style of communication associated with extraversion. Collectivistic societies, such as those in East Asia, value privacy and restraint, qualities more characteristic of introverts. — Laurie Helgoe

Silence is a form of communication, too. Sometimes less is more. — Pat Summitt

They walked as old friends walk, without often speaking, sharing the kind of silence that is not so much silence as a kind of still communication. — Susan Cooper

God's warriors don't avoid conflict. They fight through it with communication and a positive outlook. — Shannon L. Alder

Q: Why do I love thee, O Night?
A: Because you know I will never answer. — Vera Nazarian

I love my loneliness as it helps me gather strength to deal with people. — Amit Abraham

If words are power then silence is superpower. — Rajesh Walecha

Silence is best reserved for the fearful and foolish. — Shannon L. Alder

Most of the conversations we are ever likely to have with people are the things we do not and cannot say — Srividya Srinivasan

I think communication starts when words are not present at all ... I think we put so much emphasis on language, actually silence is so much more important. — Marina Abramovic

The very presence of an angel is communication. Even when an angel crosses your path in silence, God has said to us, I am here. I am present in your life. — Tobais Palmer

Not every instance requires a response. Truth resides silently in the seat of power. — T.F. Hodge

If you keep shouting, you are not making communication any better. You are only removing the talking and whispering from the system. I find our society a bit noisy. I would like to contribute a little silence. — Bruno Monguzzi

Silence is banished from our screens; it has no place in communication. Media images (and media texts resemble media images in every way) never fall silent: images and messages must follow one upon the other without interruption. But silence is exactly that - a blip in the circuitry, that minor catastrophe, that slip which, on television for instance, becomes
highly meaningful - a break laden now with anxiety, now with jubilation, which confirms the fact that all this communication is basically nothing but a rigid script, an uninterrupted fiction designed to free us not only from the void of the television screen but equally from the void of our own mental screen, whose images we wait on with the same fascination. — Jean Baudrillard

He turned, stood above the crowd gazing up at him. There was silence in the
square. And yet he had never felt such complete communication. It was as though they read each other's thoughts, as though they were one and the same: they were part of him,every Florentine standing below, eyes turned up to him, and he was a part of them. — Irving Stone

The loneliness of the place had entered our very bones, and silence seemed natural, for after a bit the sound of our voices became a trifle unreal and forced; whispering would have been the fitting mode of communication, I felt, and the human voice, always rather absurd amid the roar of the elements, now carried with it something almost illegitimate. It was like talking out loud in church, or in some place where it was not lawful, perhaps not quite safe, to be overheard. — Algernon Blackwood

In an age that valued prolonged and detailed exposition, complexity, and repetition it was astonishing that Luther should have instinctively discerned the value of brevity. — Andrew Pettegree

Information is like water. It finds its way to all the wrong places. — Dexter Hawk

Speech is one symptom of affection; and silence one; the perfect communication is heard of none. — Emily Dickinson

Silence can sometimes save you. everything doesn't warrant words. — Alexandra Elle

Love is a loud communication between two and a mannequin of silence for others — Akansh Malik

But they're too shy to speak when my mother-in-law doesn't; sometimes they open their mouths to begin, but they never get as far as the first sentence. You must get used to an ocean of silence, and just swim about in it as well as you can. — Edith Wharton

It is foolish to be lavish in words and niggardly in truth. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

A woman's silence is one of her most powerful forms of communication; it conveys emotions, so intense, that no words could possibly describe how she feels at that moment. — Amari Soul

To communicate through silence is a link between the thoughts of man. — Marcel Marceau

On a ship, knowing when to be silent is just as important as knowing when to speak. — J.Z. Colby

Silence is a form of communication. Speech divides us. — David Malouf

We communicate like the burrows of foxes, in silence and darkness, under ground. We are undermined by faith and love. — Henry David Thoreau

When it occurs without having to voice it - vibin' on the same page, flowin' on the same wave, soakin' up the same light rays. — T.F. Hodge

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

Silence is also a form of speaking. — Herta Muller

Empathize with silence by listening for the feelings and needs behind it. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

I think we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is a continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication is too alarming. To enter into someone else's life is too frightening. To disclose to others the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility. — Harold Pinter

Over the years, they'd become accomplished at avoiding unpleasant topics. Their burdened demeanors spoke volumes through the silence. — Glenn B Miller

The truest communication with God is absolute, total silence; there is not a single word in existence that can convey this communication. — Bernadette Roberts

when words make noise, silence can talk. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Silence is not simply the absence of noise or the shutdown of communication with the outside world, but rather a process of coming to stillness. — Brennan Manning

Language consists in equal parts of speaking and silence. — Eugene H. Peterson

Linguist say parties in the conversation will tolerate silence for four seconds before interjecting anything, however unrelated. — Bill Bryson

Only their efforts to make him talk failed. he would say one word at a time, if pressed, but seemed happier not to and could not be made to repeat a whole line. Gradually, as his family learnt how to anticipate his few needs and how to respond, they ceased to notice his silence -his manner of communication seemed full and rich enough to them: he no more needed to converse than Aunt Mira's cat did. — Anita Desai

Volumes are spoken when nothing is being said. — R.J. Torbert

If one wants to be loved
and return it full score
dagger of silence
closes the door. — David W. Earle