Keep silent Quotes

“I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. . . . The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.”

“It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie.”

“We need a reason to speak but none to keep silent.”

“I see no reason to keep silent about my enjoyment of the sound of my own voice as I work. ”

“To write,” Marguerite Duras remarked, “is also not to speak. It is to keep silent. It is to howl noiselessly.”

“We should keep silent about those in power; to speak well of them almost implies flattery; to speak ill of them while they are alive is dangerous, and when they are dead is cowardly.”

“The man who goes to the top is the man who has something to say and says it when circumstances warrant. Men who keep silent underdressed are moral cowards.”

“There is still hope that if the people refuse to give up and keep silent, no matter how long or inconsequential their voices could be at the beginning, it would still be heard and justice be served.”

“I no longer believe that we can keep silent. We never really do, mind you. In one way or another we articulate what has happened to us through the kind of people we become.”