This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Your silence is better than your speech.
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 |
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 |
Of all eloquence a nickname is the most concise; of all arguments the most unanswerable.
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 |
False eloquence is exaggeration, true eloquence is emphasis.
The silence of a friend commonly amounts to treachery.
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 |
Marquis de Sade, born Donatien Alphonse François de Sade
So long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we are obliged to display in public.
Chastity | Discretion | Display | Opinion | Public | Silence |
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
Silence is all we dread. There's Ransom in a Voice - but Silence is Infinity.
Silence |