“When we realize that words can destroy something good, wonderful, and dear, and that by keeping silent we can avoid causing the least damage or harm, it’s easy to stay silent.”

Source: Masquerade and Other Stories

Last update Dec. 30, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "When we realize that words can destroy something good, wonderful, and dear, and that by keeping silent we can avoid cau…" by Robert Walser?
Robert Walser photo
Robert Walser 8
Swiss writer 1878–1956

Related quotes

Victor Hugo photo

“It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

“Language is at the heart of poetry and it is difficult to commandeer words which elicit no personal echo. Of what we can speak, we need not be silent.”

Dennis O'Driscoll (1954–2012) Irish poet, critic

Interview with Eugene O'Connell 'Cork Literary Review vol xiii 2009
Poetry Quotes

Bram van Velde photo

“Painting is being alive. Through my painting, I beat back this world that stops us living and where we are in constant danger of being destroyed... No, you have to know when to keep silent.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

short quotes, 31 December 1966; pp. 60-61
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

Rabindranath Tagore photo

“We do not stray out of all words into the ever silent”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

16
The Gardener http://www.spiritualbee.com/love-poems-by-tagore/ (1915)
Context: We do not stray out of all words into the ever silent;
We do not raise our hands to the void for things beyond hope.

Azar Nafisi photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Kurt Vonnegut photo

“If you can do no good, at least do no harm.”

Slapstick (1976)

Douglas Adams photo

“If we think that the world is here for us we will continue to destroy it the way we have been destroying it, because we think we can do no harm.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Parrots, the Universe and Everything (2001)

Audre Lorde photo
Rutherford B. Hayes photo

“I have a talent for silence and brevity. I can keep silent when it seems best to do so, and when I speak I can, and do usually, quit when I am done.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Diary (20 November 1872)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Context: I have a talent for silence and brevity. I can keep silent when it seems best to do so, and when I speak I can, and do usually, quit when I am done. This talent, or these two talents, I have cultivated. Silence and concise, brief speaking have got me some laurels, and, I suspect, lost me some. No odds. Do what is natural to you, and you are sure to get all the recognition you are entitled to.

Related topics