The Unsaid Things Quotes & Sayings

If we all spoke the truth there would be a great deal of unhappiness in the world, and particularly at such a time. Some things are better left unsaid. — Amanda Grange

There is a moment that comes into every life when the right word, the right look even, could change the shape of the world forever. The wrong one could as well, though the resulting shape would be different. No word at all, however, and the moment slips by, and things remain unsaid that perhaps should have been said, perhaps shouldn't, and no one can ever know for sure. — Anne Elisabeth Stengl

I don't have to tell you it goes without saying there are some things better left unsaid. I think that speaks for itself. The less said about it the better. — George Carlin

In the world of diplomacy, some things are better left unsaid. — Lincoln Chafee

Two versions of the same face looking into blank screens, two very different minds thinking of things unsaid. Sometimes love is in silence. — Roger Zelazny

There are some things I must try to say before the still watches come again in which the things unsaid hurt so and cry out in the heart to be uttered. — Erik Larson

Every death diminishes us, but those that leave differences unresolved and things unsaid are the most painful of all. — Marcia Muller

Always and everywhere the message of the same rests on the pathway:
The simple preserves the puzzle of what remains and what is just. Spontaneously it enters men and needs a lengthy growth. With the unpretentiousness of the ever-same it hides its blessing. The breadth of all growing things which rest along the pathway bestows the world. In what remains unsaid in their speech is - as Eckardt, the old master of letters and life, says - God, only God. — Martin Heidegger

I won't discuss non-discussable things with her, like the sound of silence or the vertical dimensions of an awkward moment. Those sorts of things are best left unsaid, like the last time I told her I loved her. — Jarod Kintz

She was like the dust that clung to his shirt. She was in the silences that had become so frequent at the house, silences that welled up between their words, sometimes cold and hollow, sometimes pregnant with things that went unsaid, like a cloud filled with rain that never fell. — Khaled Hosseini

Only the Small Things are ever said. The Big Things lurk unsaid inside. — Arundhati Roy

To follow Jesus implies that we enter into a way of life that is given character and shape and direction by the one who calls us. To follow Jesus means picking up rhythms and ways of doing things that are often unsaid but always derivative from Jesus, formed by the influence of Jesus. To follow Jesus means that we can't separate what Jesus is saying from what Jesus is doing and the way that he is doing it. To follow Jesus is as much, or maybe even more, about feet as it is about ears and eyes (The Way of Jesus, Eugene H. Peterson, 22). — Eugene H. Peterson

There are things that once done can't be undone, things that once said can't be unsaid. — Lisa Gardner

Because one of the truths about a marriage - I knew that then, and I know it now - was that there should be some secrets. Small things, inconsequential things. I didn't believe a person could ever know another person wholly, inside out, and I was okay with that. Because inside, there were some ugly things, the blood and guts, the things that were better buried, better unsaid. — Paula Treick DeBoard

One of the most familiar tricks of the orator or propagandist is to leave certain things unsaid, things that are highly relevant to the argument, but that might be challenged if they were made explicit. While — Mortimer J. Adler

It's tempting to preface everything with "In my life I've found" so that people can't yell at me for being wrong (I often am) or misinformed (sure) or overly emotional (HOW DARE YOU). But this is a book about my life so I have to simply hope that unsaid disclaimer is just implied. This is my life, and my observations of it, and they change as I change. That's one of the frightening things about writing a book that no one ever tells you. You have to pin down your thoughts and opinions and then they exist on a page, ungrowing, forever. You may convince yourself that you were never stupid or coarse or ignorant but one day you reread your seventh-grade diary and rediscover the person who one day becomes you, and you vacillate between wanting to hug this unfinished, confused stranger and wanting to shake some damn sense into her. — Jenny Lawson

Catherine Land liked the beginnings of things. The pure white possibility of the empty room, the first kiss, the first swipe at larceny. And endings, she liked endings, too. The drama of the smashing glass, the dead bird, the tearful goodbye, the last awful word which could never be unsaid or unremembered.
It was the middles that gave her pause. This, for all its forward momentum, this was a middle. The beginnings were sweet, the endings usually bitter, but the middles were only the tightrope you walked between the one and the other. No more than that. — Robert Goolrick

Aware of how tenuous life can be. How too many things go unsaid or undone. How we wait too long and miss the chance." "Miss — Suanne Laqueur

How did we become so prejudiced by our idiosyncrasies? ... We shared the same languages, but spoke of worlds so subtly different that language was not enough. Over time the big things were left unsaid; they gave way to the little things, those once-endearing imperfections that had somewhere become deal breakers. — Miguel Syjuco

when i was little i used to save my baths for later. id come back to them before bed and sit in the old cold bathwater and run cool water out of the shower and pretend i was hiding in vietnam and it was raining. i was young when i did this and am not sure why i was thinking about vietnam or what i knew about it. i did this when i was older too. im thinking about doing it again tonight.

you are running out of time to get everything you want exactly the way you want it. (this is a joke.) most things are going to be left unsaid. (this is not a joke.) a few weeks ago my mom sent me an email with pictures of eagles that said "how about these eagles." she visits my cousin in jail once a month. that seems like a lot for an aunt. he is in jail because he shot his girlfriend in the face but they are still together. she told me once that she knew in her heart that he is guilty but now she claims she never said that. — Heiko Julien

And once again, only the Small Things were said. The Big Things lurked unsaid inside. — Arundhati Roy

Here are the things I want for you -
I want you to be happy. I want someone else to know the warmth of your smile, to feel the way I did when I was in your presence.
I want you to know how happy you once made me and though you really did hurt me, in the end, I was better for it. I don't know if what we had was love, but if it wasn't, I hope to never fall in love. Because of you, I know I am too fragile to bear it.
I want you to remember my lips beneath your fingers and how you told me things you never told another soul. I want you to know that I have kept sacred, everything you had entrusted in me and I always will.
Finally, I want you to know how sorry I am for pushing you away when I had only meant to bring you closer. And if I ever felt like home to you, it was because you were safe with me. - I want you to know that most of all. — Lang Leav

He found in the time he was able to spend with Tom - by phone once a month and what became after a time an annual visit to Sydney in midwinter, and then, as his reputation grew and he travelled to Sydney more frequently - that special closeness that siblings sometimes have. It was an ease of company that allows for most things to be unsaid, for awkwardness and error to be entirely unimportant, and for that strange sense of a mysterious shared soul to be expressed through the most trivial of small talk. If beyond their blood relation they had almost nothing in common, Dorrigo Evans still increasingly felt with Tom that he was but one aspect of a larger thing, of which his brother was another, different but complementary part, and their meetings were not so much an assertion of self as a welcome dissolution of it in each other. — Richard Flanagan

Poetry teaches us things that cannot be learned in prose, such as certain kinds of irony or the importance of the unsaid. The most important element of any poem is the part that is left unsaid. So the poetry frames the experience that lies beyond naming. — Sam Hamill

You know what I'm not going to do I'm not going to tell you every move I'm going to make. This isn't a reality TV show. Some things are just best left unsaid. I'll handle the club the way I deem is necessary. They just need to play. — Clint Hurdle

In the Somali culture many things go unsaid: how we love, who we love and why we love that way. I don't know why Suldana loves the way she does. I don't know why she loves who she does. But I do know that by respecting her privacy I am letting her dream in a way that my generation was not capable of. I'm letting her reach for something neither one of us can articulate. — Diriye Osman

We can't talk about it, or I know she won't so I don't even try, but it's what goes unsaid between people tat builds up like masonry. You have to either knock the bricks out with other things, or let them keep stacking until eventually you are alone in a room. — Justin Taylor

I'll be there for Thanksgiving', Mike said before hanging up, and she heard his kiss on the phone--the kind reserved for family." Things Unsaid, from Chapter, "Thanksgiving — Diana Y. Paul

There's a universe inside your head, constellations of the things you left unsaid. — Lauren Aquilina

What I felt in each instance was sadness, loneliness (the loneliness of the abandoned child of whatever age), regret for time gone by, for things unsaid, for my inability to share or even in any real way to acknowledge, at the end, the pain and helplessness and physical humiliation they each endured. I understood the inevitability of each of their deaths. I had been expecting (fearing, dreading, anticipating) those deaths all my life. They remained, when they did occur, distanced, at a remove from the ongoing dailiness of my life. — Joan Didion

We were never lovers, and we never will be, now. I do not regret that, however. I regret the conversations we never had, the time we did not spend together. I regret that I never told him that he made me happy, when I was in his company. The world was the better for his being in it. These things alone do I now regret: things left unsaid. And he is gone, and I am old. — Neil Gaiman

In the end, neither fretting nor bravado could distract him any longer from the thought that he was fatherless. He and his father had in their jocular, gingerly fashion loved each other, but now that his father was dead, Joe felt only regret. It was not just the usual regret over things left unsaid, thanks unexpressed and apologies withheld. Joe did not yet regret the lost future opportunities for expatiation on favorite shared subjects, such as film directors (they revered Buster Keaton) or breeds of dogs. — Michael Chabon

I've learned so much during my time with cancer. It's taught me a lot about who I am. It revealed to me my true goals and priorities. It introduced me to a brand new world where time isn't wasted, and important things aren't left unsaid. All the while, the superfluities of life are ignored and forgotten. Because I now understand how a person should act, whether confronted by death or not. And it's a shame that's what it takes to scare someone into becoming a conducive, meritable human being. — Kevin Lankes

But we always avoided talking about these things - difficult things - and I wondered if that meant we'd be a little uncomfortable with or disappointed by each other for the rest of our lives. — Catherine Lacey

This is a story about survival.
Letting go and learning to let in.
Getting along and moving on.
The truth about life.
The things left unsaid ... — Nadege Richards

The more articulate somebody is, the more suspicious I am of them. I like to feel that the important things remain unsaid. — Daniel Day-Lewis

I recognize the power of silence in an extroverted world but there is a time for silence and a time to speak up about things that matter that continue to be left unsaid. — Matthew Donnelly

The worst part about losing someone you love - besides the agony of never getting to see them again - are the things you never said. The unsaid stalks you, mocks you for thinking you had all the time in the world. None of us do. — Karen Marie Moning

The things left unsaid to people we care about, and the void those unspoken words leave, often have more impact than what is said. — Tyler Knight

You know what else is adorable? When I can clearly see you having a furious discussion in your own head."
"That's visible?"
Oh, God, how mortifying.
"Kit, you practically mouth the words."
"I do not," I protest, but now I'm not so sure. No one's ever said this to me before. I was always certain that my silence was taken for a lack of things to say, instead of the opposite: sometimes, there are so many things I want to say that they overwhelm me. I've got years of unsaid conversations in my head. — Charlotte Stein

The whole idea of WHAT HAPPENED WAS ... is not about dating. It is more about people who are not committed to who they are or are indifferent about their life in general, which is how I felt about myself when I wrote it. I had turned 40 and I was unhappy and I wanted to write about that. Dating just became the framework ... I like all those fringy, weird, nonverbal, quiet, tiny little things, those powerful interchanges between people, things that go unsaid, that people know are happening all the time but nobody wants to talk about. That's what I want to make movies about. — Tom Noonan

The things that go unsaid are often the things that eat at you--whether because you didn't get to have your say, or because the other person never got to hear you and really wanted to. — Celeste Ng

You can rely too much, my love, on the unspoken things. And the wry smile. I have that smile myself, and I've learned the silence too, over the years. Along with your expressions, like No notion and Of necessity. What happens, though, when it is all unsaid, is that you wake up one morning, no, it's more like late one afternoon, and it's not just unsaid, it's gone. That's all. Just gone. I remember this word, that look, that small inflection, after all this. I used to hold them, trust them, read them like a rune. Like a sign that there was a house, a billet, a civilization where we were. I look back and I think I was just there all alone. Collecting wisps and signs. — Renata Adler

Don't ruin the moment by saying something stupid. There's elegance in things left unsaid. — Kurtis J. Wiebe

Soul mates are the one who understand the unspoken, hear the unsaid and feel the unfelt. They bring out in you the things even you are unaware of till now and they are the wind with the help of which you can soar high in the sky towards your dream. Your soul mate is an extension of you, who does not complete you, brings out a complete you, someone who merges with you not to lose her identity but to give you a picture of serenity! — Namrata

It was the same mantra she had silently chanted before on other festive occasions. 'May you be happy'--her mother had wanted to be happy, hadn't she? Didn't everyone?" Things Unsaid, from Chapter, "Birthday Celebration — Diana Y. Paul

But we make such mistakes all the time, all through our lives. Wisdom, I suppose, is seeing this and acting upon it before it is too late. But it is often too late, isn't it? - and those things that we should have said are unsaid, and remain unsaid for ever. — Alexander McCall Smith

It's easier to let fear win. Even though love covers all things, fear is what keeps us silent and keeps words unsaid. Fear keeps us standing in one place. Eventually, when it wins, it means we never got the courage to say what we needed to say. But the words are needed. They won't always fix things or mend things or make things better. They won't bring someone back. They won't stop a good-bye. They won't be perfect. But they'll be true. And maybe that is all we have ever needed from one another: true words written with a love that feels too big to pin down to a page with measly little syllables. — Hannah Brencher

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

People in bands don't have the kind of conversations people might think they have. The best things about being in a band are the things that are unsaid. — Thom Yorke

There it is; the light across the water. Your story. Mine. His. It has to be seen to be believed. And it has to be heard. In the endless babble of narrative, in spite of the daily noise, the story waits to be heard.
Some people say that the best stories have no words. They weren't brought up to Lighthousekeeping. It is true that words drop away, and that the important things are often left unsaid. The important things are learned in faces, in gestures, not in our locked tongues. The true things are too big or too small, or in any case is always the wrong size to fit in the template called language. — Jeanette Winterson

Women often seemed to leave things unsaid, and in his limited experience it was what they did not say that proved the most trouble. — Robert Jordan

Again, the filet bows to the lily.
Again, the rose is tearing off her gown ...
The bud is shy, but the wind removes
her veil suddenly, 'My friend!' ...
And the cove to the willow, 'You are the one I hope for ... "
The ringdove comes asking, 'Where,
where is the Friend?" ...
Again, the season of Spring has come
And a spring-source rises under everything,
A moon sliding from the shadows.
Many things must be left unsaid because it's late, but whatever conversation we haven't had tonight, we'll have tomorrow. — Rumi

And the air was full of Thoughts and Things to Say. But at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. Big Things lurk unsaid inside. — Arundhati Roy

An awkward silence descended between us. Where did that phrase come from? I wonder. Silence descended. Descended from where exactly? Was it hovering over us like the alien spaceship in Independence Day? Maybe it wasn't really silence so much as it was the smothering weight of something unsaid, words we'd kept at bay, kept in the air, by talking about other things. — Jacqueline Carey

When you feel that a relationship is not same as it was and it is lacking the old charm, love, and magic - give it some space.

We often complicate things by wondering how to fix it. At times, just some space and unsaid love can heal even those wounds that are deeply engraved. — Nikita Dudani

The Japanese tend to communicate via nuance and euphemism, often leaving important things unsaid; whereas Americans tend to think they're being subtle when they refrain from grabbing the listener by the shirt. — Dave Barry

I'm talking about the ones who, for whatever reason, are as much a part of you as your own soul. Their place in your heart is tender; a bruise of longing, a pulse of unfinished business.
Just hearing their names pushes and pulls at you in a hundred ways, and when you try to define those hundred ways, describe them even to yourself, words are useless. If you had a lifetime to talk, there would still be things left unsaid. — Sara Zarr

The habits of a lifetime when everything else had to come before writing are not easily broken, even when circumstances now often make it possible for writing to be first; habits of years - responses to others, distractibility, responsibility for daily matters - stay with you, mark you, become you. The cost of discontinuity (that pattern still imposed on women) is such a weight of things unsaid, an accumulation of material so great, that everything starts up something else in me; what should take weeks take me sometimes months to write; what should take months, takes years. — Tillie Olsen

Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere he can be cured and made human again. — C.S. Lewis