“No one has a finer command of language than the person who keeps his mouth shut.”
“The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak.”
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Friedrich Nietzsche 655
German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and cl… 1844–1900Related quotes
“Success = 1 part work + 1 part play + 1 part keep your mouth shut”
Source: Ideas and Opinions
Said to Samuel J Woolf, Berlin, Summer 1929. Cited with additional notes in The Ultimate Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice and Freeman Dyson, Princeton UP (2010) p 230
1920s
Variant: If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.
“Life is fraught with opportunities to keep your mouth shut.”
“The first thing a psychologist learns is to keep her mouth shut around laymen.”
Source: …And All the Stars a Stage (1971; [serialized in 1960]), Chapter 13 (p. 180)