Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Alexander Maclaren

As the flowers follow the sun, and silently hold up their petals to be tinted and enlarged by its shining, so must we, if we would know the joy of God, hold our souls, wills, hearts, and minds, still before Him, whose voice commands, whose love warns, whose truth makes fair our whole being. God speaks for the most pat in such silence only. If the soul be full of tumult and jangling voices, His voice is little likely to be heard.

God | Joy | Little | Love | Silence | Soul | Truth | Wills | Wisdom | God |

Peter Minard

Not merely an absence of noise, Real Silence begins when a reasonable being withdraws form the noise in order to find peace and order in his inner sanctuary. The exodus from slavery toward the possession of the Kingdom.

Absence | Noise | Order | Peace | Silence | Slavery | Wisdom |

William Mountford

Never, never do great thoughts come to a man while he is discontented or fretful. There must be quiet in the temple of his soul before the windows of it will open for him to see out of them into the infinite. Quiet is what heavenly powers move in. It is in silence that the stars move on, and it is in quiet that our souls are visited from on high.

Man | Quiet | Silence | Soul | Will | Wisdom |

John Boyle O'Reilly

Be silent and safe - silence never betrays you.

Safe | Silence | Wisdom |

Max Picard

The language of the child is silence transformed into sound: the language of the adult is sound that seeks for silence.

Language | Silence | Sound | Wisdom | Child |

Max Picard

The world of silence without speech is the world before creation, the world of unfinished creation. In silenced truth is passive and slumbering, but in language it is wide-awake. Silence is fulfilled only when speech comes forth from silence and gives it meaning and honor.

Honor | Language | Meaning | Silence | Speech | Truth | Wisdom | World |

William Penn

True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment. It is a great virtue: it covers folly, keeps secrets, avoids disputes, and prevents sin.

Body | Folly | Mind | Rest | Silence | Sin | Spirit | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |

Max Picard

Suffering only becomes unbearable when, separated from the great silence in the world, it is merely a part of the noise of history, and then has to bear its burden alone.

History | Noise | Silence | Suffering | Wisdom | World |

Francis Quarles

Silence is the highest wisdom of a fool as speech is the greatest trial of a wise man. If thou wouldst be known as wise, let thy words show thee so; if thou doubt thy words, let thy silence feign thee so. It is not a greater point of wisdom to discover knowledge than to hide ignorance.

Doubt | Ignorance | Knowledge | Man | Silence | Speech | Wisdom | Wise | Words | Trial |

Frederic Saunders

Whatever of goodness emanates from the soul, gathers its soft halo in the eyes; an if the heart be a lurking-place of crime, the eyes are sure to betray the secret. A beautiful eye makes silence eloquent, a kind eye makes contradiction assent, an enraged eye makes beauty a deformity; so you see, forsooth, the little organ plays no inconsiderable, if not a dominant, part.

Beauty | Contradiction | Crime | Heart | Little | Silence | Soul | Wisdom | Beauty |

Leroy Brownlow

There are times when silence has the loudest voice.

Silence |

Dave Tyson Gentry

True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable.

People | Silence | Friendship |