A collection of silence quotes to inspire you to listen more and speak less.
Silence can be very powerful and eye-opening. It’s is during those moments, when you allow yourself to be silent and to be aware of everything around you that you open yourself to self-reflection and self-awareness.
Most of us find sitting down in silence daunting. I do too.
Every time I find myself in moments of silence, I would always usually pick up my phone to distract myself.
But I didn’t realize that moments of silence can be pure bliss and a breathe of fresh air for our minds and souls.
In this day of age, our lives are flooded with so much noise every single day that we fail to realize that by making time for silent moments, we are allowing ourselves to reflect and figure out our lives.
We are giving ourselves time to check in with what we are feeling and with everything that we would want to change and improve in our lives.
These inspirational quotes about silence below will inspire you to take the time to pause, sit down and just listen.
Here are 60+ Silence Quotes
We went down into the silent garden. Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.
— Leonora Carrington
All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.
— Blaise Pascal
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and right doing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.
— Rumi
A fool is known by his speech; and a wise man by silence.
— Pythagoras
Silence is a source of Great Strength.
— Lao Tzu
How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.
— Virginia Woolf
Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.
— Francis Bacon
We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken a lifetime to learn. It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox.
— Nicholas Sparks
You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;
And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.
And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.
— Khalil Gibran
The true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.
— Edgar Allan Poe
He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.
— Elbert Hubbard
Silent solitude makes true speech possible and personal. If I am not in touch with my own belovedness, then I cannot touch the sacredness of others. If I am estranged from myself, I am likewise a stranger to others.
— Brennan Manning
Speech is silver, silence is golden.
— Thomas Carlyle
God is whispering in your heart, in the whole existence, just tune your ears.
— Amit Ray
It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart. — Mahatma Gandhi
When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.
— Ansel Adams
In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.
— Henry David Thoreau
Saying nothing sometimes says the most.
— Emily Dickinson
Never miss a good chance to shut up.
— Will Rogers
Listen closely… the eternal hush of silence goes on and on throughout all this, and has been going on, and will go on and on. This is because the world is nothing but a dream and is just thought of and the everlasting eternity pays no attention to it.
— Jack Kerouac
Quiet people always know more than they seem. Although very normal, their inner world is by default fronted mysterious and therefore assumed weird. Never underestimate the social awareness and sense of reality in a quiet person; they are some of the most observant, absorbent persons of all.
— Criss Jami
Listen to silence. It has so much to say.
— Rumi
We refuse to turn off our computers, turn off our phone, log off Facebook, and just sit in silence, because in those moments we might actually have to face up to who we really are.
— Jefferson Bethke
Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.
— Leonardo da Vinci
The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
— Albert Einstein
The good and the wise lead quiet lives.
— Euripides
RELATED INSPIRATIONAL QUOTE POSTS:
Thought-Provoking Silence Quotes
To listen to the silence, wherever you are, is an easy and direct way of becoming present.
— Eckhart Tolle
Sometimes it’s best to stay quiet. The silence can speak volumes without ever saying a word.
— Unknown
Silence is of different kinds, and breathes different meanings.
— Charlotte Brontë
Silence is sometimes the best answer.
— Dalai Lama
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
— Xenocrates
In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.
— Robert Lynd
Even if your silence could mean being weak to some, you know it means being strong.
— Maxime Lagacé
The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention… A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.
— Rachel Naomi Remen
But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question.
— Thomas Merton
The most significant conversations of our lives occur in silence.
— Simon Van Booy
Silence is true wisdom’s best reply.
— Euripides
Silence is the safest course for any man to adopt who distrust himself.
— Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
Inner silence is the mother of all talents.
— Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Speech is great, but silence is greater.
— Thomas Carlyle
When a question has no correct answer, there is only one honest response.
The gray area between yes and no.
Silence.
— Dan Brown
I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me.
— Albert Einstein
Work hard in silence, let your success make the noise.
— Frank Ocean
Time and silence are the most luxurious things today.
— Tom Ford
Wise men, when in doubt whether to speak or to keep quiet, give themselves the benefit of the doubt, and remain silent. — Napoleon Hill
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence.
— Marianne Moore
The silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails.
— William Shakespeare
Open your mouth only if what you are going to say is more beautiful than the silence.
— Spanish Proverb
In the silence behind what can be heard lies the answers we have been searching for for so long.
— Andreas Fransson
Silence is a true friend who never betrays.
— Confucius
MORE INSPIRING SILENCE QUOTES AND QUOTES ABOUT BEING SILENT
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
— Martin Luther King Jr
Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.
— Charles de Gaulle
Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.
— Josh Billings
Green was the silence, wet was the light,
the month of June trembled like a butterfly.
— Pablo Neruda
Silence is refreshment for the soul.
— Wynonna Judd
Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.
— William S. Burroughs
Deep vengeance is the daughter of deep silence.
— Vittorio Alfieri
In Silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.
— Rumi
I have packed myself into silence so deeply and for so long that I can never unpack myself using words. When I speak, I only pack myself a little differently.
— Herta Müller
Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.
— Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it. – Amir
— Khaled Hosseini
I drank the silence of God from a spring in the woods.
— Georg Trakl
If you can sit in silence with a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, you and that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you’ll never be and you need not waste time in trying.
— L.M. Montgomery
If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet…maybe we could understand something.
— Federico Fellini
True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.
— William Penn
I have never heard a more eloquent silence.
— Laurie Halse Anderson
A man is known by the silence he keeps.
— Oliver Herford
All I want is blackness. Blackness and silence.
— Sylvia Plath
We sit and talk,
quietly, with long lapses of silence
and I am aware of the stream
that has no language, coursing
beneath the quiet heaven of
your eyes
which has no speech
— William Carlos Williams,
I like the muted sounds, the shroud of grey, and the silence that comes with fog.
— Om Malik
Within us is the soul of the whole, the wise silence, the universal beauty, the eternal One.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
The best cure for the body is a quiet mind
— Napoleon Bonaparte
You are most powerful when you are most silent. People never expect silence. They expect words, motion, defense, offense, back and forth. They expect to leap into the fray. They are ready, fists up, words hanging leaping from their mouths. Silence? No.
— Alison McGhee
Music is the silence between the notes.
— Claude Debussy
Be silent or let thy words be worth more than silence.
— Pythagoras
Sometimes you don’t have to say anything. Silence speaks it all.
— Disha Patani