“Blessed are they who have nothing to say, and who cannot be persuaded to say it.”

—  James Russell Lowell

Speech at the banquet for Grand Duke Alexis, 11 November 1871 at the Revere House Hotel in Boston, p. 102 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=YRmn-_vXZ58C&pg=PA102&dq=persuaded
Cf. George Eliot 1879: Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact

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James Russell Lowell 175
American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat 1819–1891

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