Unspoken Quotes & Sayings

His jaw was clenched. His breathing became labored, like he was carrying something heavy. She watched the muscles in his throat working, Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed, hard.
Victory.
At that moment, she knew he wouldn't try to stop her. She stepped forward, raised herself up on her tiptoes, and kissed him. Softly. Then she pulled back, challenge unspoken.
Come on, Sam. Fight for me. — Isobel Irons

The unspoken word is capital. We can invest it or we can squander it. — Mark Twain

And with a new name came the ultimate alleviation of some gross unspoken responsiblity. — Rosca Marx

Growing up in eastern Turkey, I was not really involved with the family business - sheep and cow farming, yogurt and cheese making. But I think I learned from my father the unspoken business language or instincts that go back thousands of years. — Hamdi Ulukaya

He sank into that kiss, and fed from me like a starving man holding off famine. I drank from his soul in preparation for the drought to come. And when he finally pulled away, my throat was thick with unspoken words, my heart heavy with every apology I'd ever denied him. But it was too late for promises. The time had come for goodbye. — Rachel Vincent

Much have we loved you. But speechless was our love, and with veils has it been veiled,
Yet now it cries aloud unto you, and would stand revealed before you.
And ever has it been that love knows not it's depth until the hour of separation — Kahlil Gibran

A conversation began to take shape between us. A conversation that happened in unspoken words, in false words, in knowing glances. — Nadia Hashimi

And only when that happens do you realise just how much silence there really is. Silence between lovers, when something really needs to be said; silence from a parent when a child needs some word more than anything else in the world; silences and in betweens and everything which isn't an answer. — Michael Marshall Smith

The whole world is beautiful, Belgarion' Eriond assured him in response to that unspoken thought. 'You just have to know how to look at it — David Eddings

The words I can't say are the holes I punch in the walls of my psyche ... — John Geddes

It's difficult for people to come to the understanding that only a small minority of the people ever really get the word about life, about living abundantly and successfully. Success in the important departments of life seldom comes naturally, no more naturally than success at anything-a musical instrument, sports, fly-fishing, tennis, golf, business, marriage, parenthood, landscape gardening. But somehow people wait passively for success to come to them, living as other people are living in the unspoken, tacit assumption that other people know how to live successfully. — Earl Nightingale

But you know how it is with fathers and sons. We can't say what we want to say. We think a nod is a paragraph and a sentence is a book, and, in the end, all that's important is left unspoken. — Peter Kirby

Part of the job of adults was to set limits. But the last rule, the unspoken rule of any story or journey, is that all limits are suspect. All warnings show only the point where the last story stopped, the boundary past which the map is unmapped. The Kingdom of Here There Be Dragons is the province of explorers, magicians, and kids. — Bob Proehl

Orange Juice? Sure. Toast? Sure. One last time on the couch? Sure. Phone number? Sure. See you again? Oooh, absolutely. That was the lie I told. Probably not, that was the truth, that was that which went unspoken. — T. Scott McLeod

He wanted her to be good, to perform acts of service, come to mass, believe on Jesus, and not make his burden for her salvation too heavy. Between them was an unspoken agreement. He would do his duty, and she would do hers. For many years, this silent understanding between Julian and her priest had been unsatisfying. She craved more: a better understanding of God and God's will. But she had long known not to ask her many questions to her priest. She knew that he certainly would wish to hear nothing of her visions. — Amy Frykholm

I missed the crowds in those big stadiums, the flashbulbs, the roaring cheers - the majesty of the whole thing. I missed it bitterly. So did my father. We shared a thirst to return; unspoken, undeniable. — Mitch Albom

What was unspoken between us, what need never be explained or said, was that nobody would ever love us again like our mothers did. Yes, we would be loved, by our fathers, our friends, our siblings, our aunts and uncles and grandparents and spouses
and our children if we chose to have them
but never would we experience that kind of unconditional, nothing-you-can-do-will-turn-me-away-from-you kind of mother love. — Melanie Gideon

So I feared not just the violence of this world but the rules designed to protect you from it, the rules that would have you contort your body to address the block, and contort again to be taken seriously by colleagues, and contort again so as not to give the police a reason. All my life I'd heard people tell their black boys and black girls to "be twice as good," which is to say "accept half as much." These words would be spoken with a veneer of religious nobility, as though they evidenced some unspoken quality, some undetected courage, when in fact all they evidenced was the gun to our head and the hand in our pocket. This is how we lose our softness. This is how they steal our right to smile. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Sometimes when the heart breaks, it doesn't know what it wants and it doesn't recognize the difference between the truth and a lie. — C.C. Hunter

She stared up into the beauty of his green eyes, and for a moment she saw everything there, all the pieces of his heart that she remembered so vividly, all the smiles and unspoken words she had earned since meeting him three months earlier. — Charlie N. Holmberg

Simplification establishes an unspoken emphasis on relationship. — Kim John Payne

Race is the great taboo in our society. We are afraid to talk about it. White folks fear their unspoken views will be deemed racist. People of color are filled with sorrow and rage at unrighted wrongs. Drowning in silence, we are brothers and sisters drowning each other. Once we decide to transform ourselves from fearful caterpillars into courageous butterflies, we will be able to bridge the racial gulf and move forward together towards a bright and colorful future. — Eva Paterson

He kissed her, and something moved between them, an unspoken bond pulling them together over what they had gone through and what they would face. But those memoires and thoughts faded away until there was nothing but the sensation of his lips on hers, the exchange of breath and the soft harmony of hearts beating. For one blissful moment they were nothing but feelings and physical sensation.
The moment lasted a very long time. — Mindee Arnett

In writing about Harold and Maureen with their terrible unspoken secret, and all those people that Harold meets as he walks to save a friend's life, I was trying to celebrate the ordinary people. — Rachel Joyce

The unspoken word never defeats one. What one does not say does not have to be explained. — William Penn

What is in the air there in Washington, what is in the water? What is wrong with them? This is not a rhetorical question. I think it is unspoken question No.1 as Americans look at so many of the individuals in our government. What is wrong with them? — Peggy Noonan

There's this unspoken history that exists between any mother and daughter, no matter how deep and loving the bond is, twenty-five years of being raised by someone, there's a kind of deep history which means that there are shortcuts to getting on each other's nerves. — Stephen Karam

Many times, I've been broken. Often used and abused. Many trials go unspoken. Often leaving me sad and confused. But Lord if you put your hands on me, And grant me just a touch of your Peace. I know that I can win this race, With the help of your mercy and grace. Lord fix me, I'm broken, and I need to move on. — B.M. Hardin

There were only 170 neurologists in Britain then and, whether spoken or unspoken, there was this insidious feeling. How can Bannister, a mere athlete, probably spoilt by all the publicity and fame, dare aspire to neurology? But I'd done a lot of research, and my academic record was very good. — Roger Bannister

Secrets that reside in the mind of one person aren't really secrets. They're unspoken fears. — Josh Kilmer-Purcell

They did not use the sonic stunners but the foray gun, the ancient weapon that fires a set of metal fragments in a burst. They shot to kill him. He was dying when I got to him, sprawled and twisted away from his skis that stuck up out of the snow, his chest half shot away. I took his head in my arms and spoke to him, but he never answered me; only in a way he answered my love for him, crying out through the silent wreck and tumult of his mind as consciousness lapsed, in the unspoken tongue, once, clearly, 'Arek!' Then no more. I held him, crouching there in the snow, while he died. They let me do that. Then they made me get up, and took me off one way and him another, I going to prison and he into the dark. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Knowing what you need doesn't always mean you know how to get it, though. I'd spent a long time hiding in my cave. No matter how much I might want to come out into the light, I knew it would hurt my eyes. I was a fool. A fool, but nevertheless too smart not to know I was the architect of my own demise, that it was time to put my past behind me. It was time to stop allowing the white elephants to stand unspoken of in my living room. — Megan Hart

Yet while it may be true that religious zeal can inspire armies better than most secular incentives, there was another great awakening that occurred before and during the Revolutionary era that also played a role. The other great awakening was a reevaluation of the merits of doubt. Often unspoken, religious skepticism in the colonial era was taboo even among professed radicals. Yet the spiritual awakenings of the middle of the eighteenth century signaled a transformation of "unbelief" from presumed moral failing to a reasonable theological and political position. — Peter Manseau

Long standing hatred between a man and a woman is just unspoken attraction that has bruised egos. — Shannon L. Alder

We were the daughters of the post-World War II American dream, the daughters of those idealized fifties sitcom families in which father knew best and mother knew her place and a kind of disappointment, and tense, unspoken sexuality rattled around like ice cubes in their nightly cocktails. — Anne Taylor Fleming

Then he was gone, and Prentice was alone in a silence that rang with all his shrill, unspoken words. He was so alone that the only thing to do was lie back on the bed and roll over and draw up his knees like an unborn baby, staring with dry eyes at a cluster of pink flowers on the wallpaper, knowing he had never been so alone in his life. — Richard Yates

When she was pregnant with her second child, a midwife asked if Catherine had any unspoken fears about anything that could go wrong with the baby - such as genetic defects or complications during the birth. My sister said, 'My only fear is that he might grow up to become a Republican. — Elizabeth Gilbert

His heritage to his children wasn't words or possessions, but an unspoken treasure, the treasure of his example as a man and a father. — Will Rogers Jr.

One senses with so many Democrats who support the Clintons an unspoken sentence: "They're all we have." They're the only big national winners the party has left. I always want to say to them: That's not true, you've got better than that, you've got good people, go look and you will find them. — Peggy Noonan

The exclusion of those who fail to conform to unspoken normative requirements of the subject. — Judith Butler

There is an unspoken pact between best friends that stipulates the following:
To induce laughter, all you have to do is look at your partner-in-crime - even in the absence of said crime. — Gina Marinello-Sweeney

WHO'S GOT A TAMPON? I JUST GOT MY PERIOD, I will announce loudly to nobody in particular in a women's bathroom in a San Francisco restaurant, or to a co-ed dressing room of a music festival in Prague, or to the unsuspecting gatherers in a kitchen at a party in Sydney, Munich, or Cincinnati. Invariably, across the world, I have seen and heard the rustling of female hands through backpacks and purses, until the triumphant moment when a stranger fishes one out with a kind smile. No money is ever exchanged. The unspoken universal understanding is: Today, it is my turn to take the tampon. Tomorrow, it shall be yours. There is a constant, karmic tampon circle. It also exists, I've found, with Kleenex, cigarettes, and ballpoint pens. — Amanda Palmer

It suddenly seemed to Laurel that all the absences in her own life, every loss and sadness, every nightmare in the dark, every unexplained melancholy, took the shadowy form of the same unanswered question, something that had been there since she was sixteen years old - her mother's unspoken secret. — Kate Morton

The unspoken truth was that New Yorkers considered everyone in the world to be just a tad - well, more than just a tad, a lot more than a tad - old-fashioned compared with themselves. — Lynn Cullen

There's often rarely any dialogue in a sex scene. With your fellow actor, it's good to talk about what the unspoken dialogue is, that's happening in the scene. You've got to play something rather than feel self-conscious or exposed. — Geoffrey Rush

I realized that you didn't have to make self-deprecating remarks or turn yourself into the butt of some unspoken joke. I also discovered that being big didn't deter possible suitors. — Maeve Binchy

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

There's an unspoken rule in affluent circles that suggests you can always define an individual's status by measuring his or her proximity to the most influential person in the room. And as the maxim goes, closer is always better. — Jamie Johnson

There are words, which should leave unspoken, and the true value of a man lies in the words the he has for not saying. — Alireza Salehi Nejad

There is an unspoken pact that women are supposed to follow. I am supposed to act like I constantly feel guilty about being away from my kids. (I don't. I love my job.) Mothers who stay at home are supposed to pretend they are bored and wish they were doing more corporate things. (They don't. They love their job.) If we all stick to the plan there will be less blood in the streets. — Amy Poehler

Some things better left unspoken — Karla M. Nashar

If you love someone, tell them.
Tell them now.
Because two hearts can easily be broken
By 3 small words that are left unspoken. — Jose N. Harris

He watched their faces, and he knew each meant desperately what she said because they loved each other, and deep inside surely each knew the words were false, that the true words were those unspoken. — Margaret Craven

There's no shame, the Kettral said, in crying in your own rack. The rest of the equation remained unspoken, axiomatic: you could cry all you wanted in your rack, provided you got up again in a day or two, provided that when you got up, you went back out, and that when you went back out, you were the baddest, fastest, most brutal motherfucker — Brian Staveley

pity very often - not always - comes with an unspoken and sometimes unrecognized element of contempt. — Dean Koontz

Writers, and the battery of critics, scholars, and publishers supporting them, would ignore or deny the commercial and symbolic interests which drive them, so involved are they in the literary game, and so accepting are they of its unspoken rules and premises (what Bourdieu calls the field's illusio). — John R.W. Speller

For what are we looking for if not to please? I do not know if the desire to attract others comes from a superabundance of vitality, possessiveness, or the hidden, unspoken need to be reassured. — Francoise Sagan

An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language. — Martin Buber

They continued to run together for the next thirty minutes. Not a word between them, only the unspoken pulse of the run. Jacob believed runners shared an implicit doctrine: push through the pain to hit a point where it doesn't hurt anymore. — Jacqueline Simon Gunn

Angela, Angela," Kami said. "We can dwell on the past or we can move into the future!"
"I can hide your body in these piles of boxes. Nobody will ever find it. — Sarah Rees Brennan

I think one of the ways that these young singers got started is that they would end up in clubs. And a lot of them were mafia owned. And so there was almost an unspoken kind of mafia sponsorship, which is just a very interesting part of that area's music history. — John Lloyd Young

Their words faded into the darkness as if they were spoken and unspoken at the same time; as if they were important and yet not at all, as if they were two people talking or maybe just one.
Darkness, she understood later, easily confused the meaning of words, of skin touching skin. In their remaining summers together she tried to find that oneness again. When it was all over,
when youth ended and he chose Maisy, she understood the lesson from the dock that night: she could never again call her feelings of intimacy and oneness love. Nor would she be fooled again into believing that her love was returned, that a boy felt more for her than friendship. — Patti Callahan Henry

At the magic touch of the beautiful the secret chords of our being are awakened, we vibrate and thrill in response to its call. Mind speaks to mind. We listen to the unspoken, we gaze upon the unseen. The master calls forth notes we know not of. Memories long forgotten all come back to us with a new significance. Hopes stifled by fear, yearnings that we dare not recognise, stand forth in new glory. — Okakura Kakuzo

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

The wind sings of our nostalgia
and the starry sky ignores our dreams.
Each snow flake is a tear that fails to trickle

Silence is full of the unspoken,
of deeds not performed,
of confessions to secret love,
and of wonders not expressed.
Our truth is hidden in our silence,
Yours and mine. — Margot Bickel

You might have Bible verses on the wall in every room of the house and yet the unspoken rituals reinforce self-centeredness rather than sacrifice. Thus — James K.A. Smith

Part of what makes a situation traumatic is not talking about it. Talking reduces trauma symptoms. When we don't talk about trauma, we remain emotionally illiterate. Our most powerful feelings go unnamed and unspoken. — Tian Dayton

Going back to school is like going back in time. Immediately, for better or for worse, you must give up a little piece of your autonomy in order to become part of the group. And every group, of course, has its hierarchies and rules- spoken and unspoken. It is like learning to live once again in a family- which, of course, is the setting where all learning begins. — Alice Steinbach

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

Each time you think something good, speak it. Never rob someone of the blessings of an unspoken treasure. — Craig Groeschel

The lessons of the past suggest that racism and resentment against people of color will continue to flourish in America as long as the history that is taught transposes the heroes and the villains. That is the unspoken truth at the heart of the nation's racial divide. — Susan L. Taylor

Seriously. She'd beaten that Unspoken One like morning wood with the same end result: an explosion. — Gena Showalter

The amount of force and violence necessary to board the train, for example was no less and no more than the amoount of politeness and consideration necessary to ensure that the cramped journey was as pleasant as possible afterwards. What is necessary? That was the unspoken but implied, and unavoidable question everywhere in India. — Gregory David Roberts

It seems so much of my time and my energy have been focused on making or trying to make other people love me. The unspoken belief was that if I could make myself lovable to others I would feel loved ... The truth is, I can only feel loved by others when I love myself. — Kimberly Kirberger

One of the very, very exciting things I have found here in L.A. is that no one talks to you about being Scottish. Whereas, if you are in London and you are trying to put films together and be a film-maker, there is a kind of unspoken sense that, if you are Scottish, you have something to overcome or else you cannot really do that project. — Peter Capaldi

It was entirely taken for granted that there wasn't any lying in our family, and I was advanced in adolescence before I realized that in plenty of homes where I played with schoolmates, and went to their parties, children lied to their parents and parents lied to their children and to each other. It took me a long time to realize that these very same everyday lies, and the stratagems and jokes and tricks and dares that went with them, were in fact the basis of the scenes I so well loved to hear about and hoped for and treasured in the conversation of adults. My instinct - the dramatic instinct - was to lead me, eventually, on the right track for a storyteller: the scene was full of hints, pointers, suggestions, and promises of things to find out and know about human beings.I had to grow up and learn to listen for the unspoken as well as the spoken - and to know a truth, I also had to recognize a lie. — Eudora Welty

While the words are yet unspoken, you are master of them; when once they are spoken, they are master of you. — Brad Thor

During December we are all ingesting, imbibing, and spending with a reckless abandon like a bachelor party on a guilt-free boondoggle. Everyone has the unspoken agreement that what happens in December stays in December. — Jim Gaffigan

When unspoken truths won't let the wound heal. Jen A. Durand. — Jen A. Durand

Though both partners may wish for reconciliation, their unspoken goals are often sharply in conflict. The abuser usually wishes to reestablish his pattern of coercive control, while the victim wishes to resist it. — Judith Lewis Herman

I am master of my spoken words and slave to those which remain unspoken. — Ankita Singhal

There was a moment of hesitation in which Joe looked into her eyes, and she looked back without flinching. Many a time, he had been at the same game with her, and she had always crumbled, bowing to his will. Now, he must have realized he was looking into the eyes of a stranger. She was someone he could not recognize, a foreigner inhabiting the body of that old Clairey, the girl he had abused, intimidated, and broken. Clairey decided then and there she would no longer cower before him. It was almost as if she were daring him to strike her in their unspoken exchange. — Tracy Winegar

Atwater knew - as did everyone at Style, though by some strange unspoken consensus it was never said aloud - that this was the single great informing conflict of the American psyche. The management of insignificance. It was the great syncretic bond of US monoculture. — David Foster Wallace

There's no 'we'," Della said. "There's you and there's me. I'll work with you on the case, but I don't trust you."
He exhaled. "Then I guess I'll have to win your trust back."
She rolled her eyes. "I'm not your concern."
"You will always be my concern," he said softly. "We all need someone, Della. That doesn't mean you aren't strong. — C.C. Hunter

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the spoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in the darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the center of the silent Word.
Oh my people, what have I done unto thee.
Where shall the word be found, where shall the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence — T. S. Eliot

I could practically hear the unspoken 'good girl' accompanied by a pat and scratch behind my ears like I was his obedient pet. — Melissa Aragon

So much of language is unspoken. So much of language is compromised of looks and gestures and sounds that are not words. People are ignorant of the vast complexity of their own communication. — Garth Stein

Her mind was like her room, in which lights advanced and retreated, came pirouetting and stepping delicately, spread their tails, pecked their way; and then her whole being was suffused, like the room again, with a cloud of some profound knowledge, some unspoken regret, and then she was full of locked drawers, stuffed with letters, like her cabinets. — Virginia Woolf

Unspoken feelings are unforgettable. — Andrei Tarkovsky

It is important to understand the continuing, confused fascination with the Second World War. For most of us, the great unspoken question is how would we have behaved in the face of danger and when forced to make major moral choices. — Antony Beevor

He's an intricate, mesmerizing puzzle; I only succeeded at putting the pieces together because for once in my life I observed. I stopped talking long enough to listen - really listen - not just to what's said, but also to everything that goes unspoken. — Jody Gehrman

I gave you painted air - tears I couldn't weep - truths I couldn't speak - all the words that caught in my throat ... — John Geddes

I've always believed that if you are precise in your thoughts, it's not the lines you say that are important - it's what exists between the lines. What I'm compelled by most is that transparency of thought, what is left unspoken. — Vera Farmiga

Any group has a sense of who it is and what is values, but this sense often remains beneath the surface. A wise leader can discern these unspoken beliefs and articulate them. — Diane Dreher

I am in the Aleph, the point at which everything is in the same place at the same time. I'm at a window, looking out at the world and its secret places, poetry lost in time and words left hanging in space ... sentences that are perfectly understood, even when left unspoken. Feelings that simultaneously exalt and suffocate. — Paulo Coelho

I look out past the corn and the wheat and wonder how many sets of bones are buried, unspoken, keeping their stories to themselves in the dirt. I wonder if they know the sky is bright blue today and the air smells sweet. I wonder if they still listen in. — Andrea Portes

Speaking unspoken words,
music is a good way to say. — Toba Beta

there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.

it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant. — Charles Bukowski

We tiptoe around like we're the Frank family and the Gestapo is downstairs. The baby monitor is in our room, and the unspoken rule is that when the kids go down, so do we. So at seven P.M., I'm in bed waiting for the sandman to come. I can't watch TV, because the noise may wake up the kids; I can't listen to music with my iPod earbuds, because then I can't hear the monitor; and I can't have sex, because that could wake up Janice. — Billy Crystal

The thing that you are too young to understand is that we all hide things. We hide them from our lovers because we wish to present our best selves, but also because if it is real love, we expect our loved one to simply understand it, without needing to ask. In a true partnership, the kind that lasts through the ages, there is an unspoken communion. — Cassandra Clare