
“There are times when good words are to be left unsaid out of esteem for silence.”
Rule of Saint Benedict (516 AD), as edited by Timothy Fry, O. S. B (1981), p. 15
Source: Little Foxes (1865), Ch. 3.
Source: Little Foxes: Or, the Insignificant Little Habits Which Mar Domestic Happiness
“There are times when good words are to be left unsaid out of esteem for silence.”
Rule of Saint Benedict (516 AD), as edited by Timothy Fry, O. S. B (1981), p. 15
“The duty of the words is to say just as much as the music has left unsaid and no more.”
From an article in The Vocalist magazine, 1902; cited from Ursula Vaughan Williams RVW (1964) p. 400.
“Thoughts left unsaid are never wasted.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 22
This Business of Living (1935-1950)
“There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered ones.”
Attributed to Teresa by Truman Capote in "An Interview with Truman Capote" by Don Lee Keith, in Contempora (October/November 1970), p. 40, as the source of the title of a work in progress which he intended as a novel, to be called Answered Prayers; no earlier publications of such an attribution has yet been located.
Variants:
There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers.
Attributed in The Last Word: A Treasury of Women's Quotes (1992) by Carolyn Warner
Disputed
“More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.”
Disputed
“Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.”
“Tears shed for self are tears of weakness, but tears shed for others are a sign of strength.”
“You left me drowning in my tears”
Music, New Jersey (1988)