Truth of Intercourse.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
Context: The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue?
“We dare not even by silence sanction lies.”
" The Third of February, 1852 http://home.att.net/%7ETennysonPoetry/tfe.htm", st. 2 (1852)
Context: We love not this French God, the child of hell,
Wild War, who breaks the converse of the wise;
But though we love kind Peace so well,
We dare not even by silence sanction lies.
It might be safe our censures to withdraw,
And yet, my Lords, not well; there is a higher law.
1830s, Sir Walter Scott (1838)
“Beyond all vanities, fights, and desires, omnipotent silence lies.”
“Simplicity,” p. 131
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “Sound of the Silence”
“Long ago, among other lies they were taught that silence was bravery.”
Source: Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit
“They took silence for assent, as the zealous often do.”
Source: The Goblin Emperor (2014), Chapter 28, "A Letter from Mer Celehar" (p. 383)
“To maintain immaculate speech, often times silence is required.”
"Where Epics Fail: Aphorisms on Art, Morality & Spirit" (2018)
“The most important language of personal joy is the often complex linguistics of silence”
All Will be Well (2004)
“I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.”
Maxim 1070
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave
The Loyalty of Free Men (1951) http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/quote-b.htm.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Loving
