“Silence,” it has been said by one writer, “is a virtue which renders us agreeable to our fellow-creatures.”
Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 23
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Samuel Butler 232
novelist 1835–1902Related quotes
Reflections on Various Subjects (1665–1678), V. On Conversation
“The certainty that everything has already been written annuls us, or renders us phantasmal.”
As quoted in Robertson The Hispanic American historical review, Vol 16 (1936), p. 325
Variant translation: Experiment is the mother of realities, removes our errors and solves our doubts [and by the same method of experiment] we are able to protect ourselves against the delusions and fables that some ancient cosmographers have left us in writing.
As quoted in Welch Europe's discovery of South Africa (1937), p. 95
cf. Esmeraldo de situ orbis, Book IV, ch. I, p. 152: Craramente se mostra ser falso o que escrevêram; poys debaixo da mesma equinocial há tanta habitaçam de jente, quanto teemos sabida e praticada; e como quer que a experiencia he madre das cousas, por ella soubemos rradicalmente a verdade.
“Silence is the wit of fools, and one of the virtues of the wise.”
Le silence est l'esprit des sots
Et l'une des vertus du sage.
Bernard de Bonnard, "Le Silence," http://books.google.com/books?id=9gAvAAAAMAAJ&pg=PR14&dq=%22Et+l%27une+des+vertus+du+sage%22+Bonnard&ei=iyzvR-bFOIa4zASV0PyoBQ#PPA244,M1 L'Almanach des Muses (1776)
Misattributed
Lecture I, p. 23
The Duties of Women (1881)
“We writers are shy, nocturnal creatures. Push us into the light and the light blinds us.”
14th time lucky (2005)
Address to UNESCO (1979), as published in Ideals and Realities: Selected Essays of Abdus Salam http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=084erO4KJCUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false (1989), p. 251.
Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs: An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry, Summertown, TN: Book Publishing Company, 1996, p. 50.