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

Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL

Philosophy finds talkativeness a disease very difficult and hard to cure. For its remedy, conversation, requires hearers: but talkative people hear nobody, for they are ever prating. And the first evil this inability to keep silence produces is an inability to listen.

Conversation | Disease | Evil | People | Philosophy | Silence |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

What a strange power there is in silence! How many resolutions are formed, how many sublime conquests effected, during that pause when lips are closed, and the soul secretly feels the eye of her Maker upon her! They are the strong ones of earth who know how to keep silence when it is a pain and grief unto them, and who gives time to their own souls to wax strong against temptation.

Earth | Grief | Pain | Power | Silence | Soul | Temptation | Time |

Saint Francis de Sales NULL

A judicious silence is always better than truth spoken without charity.

Better | Charity | Silence | Truth |

Sidney Hook

To silence criticism is to silence freedom.

Criticism | Freedom | Silence |

Sophocles NULL

In silence many virtues lie.

Silence |

Midrash or The Midrash NULL

If speech is silvern, then silence is golden.

Silence | Speech |

Talmud or The Talmud NULL

If silence be good for the wise, how much the better for fools.

Better | Good | Silence | Wise |

Talmud or The Talmud NULL

Your silence is better than your speech.

Better | Silence | Speech |

Thomas Carlyle

Speech is of time, silence is of eternity.

Eternity | Silence | Speech | Time |

Thomas Carlyle

In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: here therefore, by Silence and by Speech acting together, comes a double significance.

Concealment | Revelation | Silence | Speech |

Thomas Carlyle

When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with its fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.

Silence |

Wendell Phillips

The heart beats louder and the soul hears quicker in silence and solitude.

Heart | Silence | Solitude | Soul |

William Law

The spiritual life is nothing else but the working of the Spirit of God within us, and therefore our own silence must be a great part of our preparation for it, and much speaking or delight in it will often no small hindrance of that good which we can only have from hearing what the Spirit and voice of God speaketh within us.

God | Good | Life | Life | Nothing | Silence | Spirit | Will | God |

William Hazlitt

The silence of a friend commonly amounts to treachery.

Friend | Silence | Treachery |

André Maurois, born born Emile Salomon Wilhelm Herzog

Men fear silence as they fear solitude, because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life's nothingness.

Fear | Life | Life | Men | Silence | Solitude | Terror |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not be doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.

Silence | Truth | Propaganda |

Bob Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman

Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most.

Experience | People | Silence |