When life is stressful, overwhelming or just plain too much then one of the most calming things is to spend some time in silence.
To renew your mind. To recharge your body and energy. To turn your perspective to a more positive and open one again.
So in today’s post I’d like to share the best 115 silence quotes of all time.
Timeless and grounding thoughts from the past 2000+ years to bring your inner peace, stillness and wise insights from the ones that came before us (and some who still walk this earth with us).
And if you want even more calming and uplifting inspiration then check out this post with quotes on inner peace and this one filled with feel good quotes.
Inspirational Silence Quotes
“The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.”
Albert Einstein
“The good and the wise lead quiet lives.”
Euripides
“The most significant conversations of our lives occur in silence.”
Simon Van Booy
“It is beautiful to talk about beautiful things and even more beautiful to silently gaze at them.”
Dejan Stojanovic
“In the silence behind what can be heard lies the answers we have been searching for for so long.”
Andreas Fransson
“Silence is pure and holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking.”
Nicholas Sparks
“Work hard in silence, let your success make the noise.”
Frank Ocean
“Lions don’t have to roar. There is power in silence, confidence, and persistence. Those who work don’t talk, and those who talk don’t work.”
Les Brown
“It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“The quiet mind is richer than a crown.”
Robert Greene
“Focus your attention on the quality of your words, and not the quantity, because few sensible talks attracts millions of listeners more than a thousand gibberish.”
Michael Bassey Johnson
“Within us is the soul of the whole, the wise silence, the universal beauty, the eternal One.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls.”
Mother Teresa
“Well-timed silence is the most commanding expression.”
Mark Helprin
“Everything that’s created comes out of silence. Thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Words come out of the void. Your very essence emerged from emptiness. All creativity requires some stillness.”
Wayne Dyer
“We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken a lifetime to learn.”
Nicholas Sparks
“Silence is a profound melody, for those who can hear it above all the noise.”
Socrates
“Don’t waste words on people who deserve your silence. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can say is nothing at all.”
Mandy Hale
“When you have nothing to say, say nothing.”
Charles Caleb Colton
“A heart worth loving is one you understand, even in silence.”
Shannon L. Alder
Relaxing and Grounding Silence Quotes
“Silence is the great teacher, and to learn its lessons you must pay attention to it. There is no substitute for the creative inspiration, knowledge, and stability that come from knowing how to contact your core of inner silence.”
Deepak Chopra
“Silence is the language of Om. We need silence to be able to reach our Self. Both internal and external silence is very important to feel the presence of that supreme Love.”
Amit Ray
“Embrace silence for a few minutes each day to recharge your energy and renew your frame of mind.”
Unknown
“External silence can be the doorway to inner silence.”
Ram Dass
“In the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone, the unseen singing softly to itself and to you.”
Rachel Naomi Remen
“I’ve begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.”
Chaim Potok
“Silence is something more than just a pause; it is that enchanted place where space is cleared and time is stayed and the horizon itself expands.”
Pico Lyer
“The world’s continual breathing is what we hear and call silence.”
Clarice Lispector
“There was a brief silence. I think I heard snow falling.”
Erich Segal
“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
“Nowhere can a man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.”
Marcus Aurelius
“I discovered that I felt at home and alive in the silence, which compelled me to enter my interior world and around there.”
Karen Armstrong
“Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn whatever state I am in, therein to be content.”
Helen Keller
“Space and silence are two aspects of the same thing. The same no-thing. They are externalization of inner space and inner silence, which is stillness: the infinitely creative womb of all existence.”
Eckhart Tolle
“Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything.”
Gordon Hempton
“To be able to see and experience new and exciting things in life you need to be able to tap into inner stillness and silence. Because inner noise creates illusions and blocks you from seeing opportunities and open doors in your life.”
Unknown
“There are in life a few moments so beautiful, that even words are a sort of profanity.”
Diana Palmer
“When my mind and thoughts are unclear, I shall focus on only my breaths to return to inner stillness and clarity.”
Unknown
“Silence is an empty space, space is the home of the awakened mind.”
Buddha
“The best cure for the body is a quiet mind.”
Napoleon Bonaparte
“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
Aldous Huxley
“Dive into your heart center. Sit in the silence. Desire self-realization with all your heart, with all your mind, and all your soul. Everything will take care of itself.”
Robert Adams
“When you’re comfortable with someone, you don’t need to always fill the void with noise. I liked it when we would just be.”
Elizabeth Eulberg
“Within each of us, there is silence. A silence as vast as the universe. And when we experience that silence, we remember who we are.”
Gunilla Norris
“Silence is like a river of grace inviting us to leap unafraid into its beckoning depths.”
Macrina Wiederkehr
“The moment you become aware of the silence, you also have become silent.”
Eckhart Tolle
“Silence is sometimes the best answer.”
Dalai Lama
Wise Silence Quotes
“We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
Martin Luther King Jr
“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 true genius shudders at incompleteness – and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.”
Edgar Allan Poe
“Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”
Leonardo da Vinci
“Silence fertilizes the deep place where personality grows. A life with a peaceful center can weather all storms.”
Norman Vincent Peale
“It is well when in difficulties, to say never a word, neither black nor white. Speech is silver but silence is golden.”
Muriel Spark
“Silence about a thing just magnifies it.”
Tennessee Williams
“A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.”
Emile M. Cioran
“The truth is silent. The truth doesn’t come with words. It’s something that I just know; it’s something that I can feel without words, and it’s called silent knowledge.”
Don Miguel Ruiz
“Silence and reserve will give anyone a reputation for wisdom.”
Myrtle Reed
“It all adds up to one thing: peace, silence, solitude. The world and its noise are out of sight and far away. Forest and field, sun and wind and sky, earth and water, all speak the same language.”
Thomas Merton
“Surely silence can sometimes be the most eloquent reply.”
Ali Ibn Abi Talib
“The closer you are to the truth, the more silent you become inside.”
Naval Ravikant
“Listen to silence. It has so much to say.”
Rumi
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
Henry David Thoreau
“I have learned now that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.”
C.S. Lewis
Insightful Silence Quotes
“Silence is golden when you can’t think of a good answer.”
Muhammad Ali
“Silence can often be more disturbing than noise, it reveals the complicated mechanism of our thoughts.”
José Rodrigues Miguéis
“The wisest man is the silent one. Examine his actions. Judge him by them.”
Karen Marie Moning
“The things that we understand, create silence. The things that we do not, create emotion.”
Kapil Gupta
“The wise man will remain silent when needed because sometimes silence speaks the most truthfully.”
Unknown
“I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.”
Henry Miller
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Silence is exhilarating at first – as noise is – but there is a sweetness to silence outlasting exhilaration, akin to the sweetness of listening and the velvet of sleep.”
Edward Hoagland
“Silence is true wisdom’s best reply.”
Euripides
“Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.”
Henri Frederic Amiel
“Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.”
Josh Billings
“Meditation is silence, energizing and fulfilling. Silent is the eloquent expression of the inexpressible.”
Sri Chinmoy
“I think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to gods who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right.”
Cato The Elder
“The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed.”
Charlotte Brontë
“Words can sting like anything, but silence breaks the heart.”
Phyllis McGinley
“One must learn to be silent just as one must learn to talk.”
Virginia Woolf
“Silence is safer than speech.”
Epictetus
“Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men’s imperfections, and conceal your own.”
George Bernard Shaw
Famous Silence Quotes
“All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.”
Blaise Pascal
“A fool is known by his speech ; and a wise man by silence.”
Pythagoras
“As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.”
Benjamin Franklin
“The truth hurts, but silence kills.”
Mark Twain
“Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most.”
Bob Dylan
“Real action is in silent moments.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot.”
Jack Kerouac
“Sound is our mind, silence is our being.”
Osho
“Hope will never be silent.”
Harvey Milk
“Time and silence are the most luxurious things today.”
Tom Ford
“The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.”
Mark Twain
“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”
Abraham Lincoln
“Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero
“Silence is a true friend who never betrays.”
Confucius
“Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.”
Francis Bacon
Short Silence Quotes
“Inner silence is the mother of all talents.”
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
“Silence brings truth to what is happening in your life. Just give it a bit of time.”
Unknown
“You can hear the footsteps of God when silence reigns in the mind.”
Sathya Sai Baba
“A sage thing is timely silence, and better than any speech.”
Plutarch
“Your very silence shows you agree.”
Euripides
“Now all my teachers are dead except silence.”
W.S. Merwin
“Speech is of time, silence is of eternity.”
Thomas Carlyle
“The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”
Blaise Pascal
“Since long I’ve held silence a remedy for harm.”
Aeschylus
“Great souls suffer in silence.”
Friedrich Schiller
“Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.”
Charles de Gaulle
“Sometimes you don’t have to say anything. Silence speaks it all.”
Disha Patani
“Silence is a source of great strength.”
Lao Tzu
“Saying nothing sometimes says the most.”
Emily Dickinson
“Silence is of different kinds, and breathes different meanings.”
Charlotte Brontë
“Noise: a stench in the ear.”
Ambrose Bierce
“As far as I’m concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.”
Albert Einstein
“Silence is so freaking loud”
Sarah Dessen
“Be silent or let thy words be worth more than silence.”
Pythagoras
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Want even more uplifting inspiration? Check out this post with inspiring quotes about wellness and also this one with short and powerful four words quotes.