Saying Nothing Quotes

1. "Yet we must say something when those who say the most are saying nothing."
Author: Augustine Of Hippo

2. "After saying all that, what have we said, my God, my life, my holy sweetness? What does anyone who speaks of you really say? Yet woe betide those who fail to speak, while the chatterboxes go on saying nothing."
Author: Augustine Of Hippo

3. "Philosophy? What good is that?" Isn't it the art of saying nothing with as many words as possible?"
Author: Brandon Sanderson

4. "Show me the telegrams they sent you, one every day for six days while they were walking six hundred miles on their pigeon toes."..1. Feet are as good as wings if you have to. Chickamauga. ...3. In the night sleeping you forget whether you have wings or feet or neither. Chattahoochee. ...6. Pity me. Far is far. Near is near. and there is no place like home when the yellow roses climb up the ladders and sing in the early summer. Pity me. Wednesday Evening In The Twilight And The Gloaming... Well, Wednesday Evening was the only one I noticed making any mention of the yellow roses in her telegram," Hatrack the Horse explained.Then the old man and the girl sat on the cracker box saying nothing, only listening to the yellow roses all on fire with early summer climbing up th ecrooked ladders, up and down and crossways, some of them leaning out and curving and nearly falling."
Author: Carl Sandburg

5. "It is a great, a pleasant thing to have a friend with whom to walk, untroubled, through the woods, by the stream, saying nothing, at peace--the heart all clean and quiet and empty, ready for the spirit that may choose to be its guest."
Author: Catherine Drinker Bowen

6. "I'm not like her. I don't steal people."Mr. Tibbalt watched her, saying nothing.The silence made Victoria bristle. "Well, I don't."
Author: Claire Legrand

7. "The poet wants to ‘say' something. Why, then, doesn't he say it directly and fortrightly? Why is he willing to say it only through his metaphors? Through his metaphors, he risks saying it partially and obscurely, and risks saying nothing at all. But the risk must be taken, for direct statement leads to abstraction and threatens to take us out of poetry altogether."
Author: Cleanth Brooks

8. "Beckett, you're doing this for people who don't even know you're protecting them. We're in the shade here. I can do this. Let me do this. I can't stand by and watch."Beckett thought for a moment, saying nothing. Blake had taken the beating like a pro. Too good to be his first time."
Author: Debra Anastasia

9. "Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing."
Author: Denis Waitley

10. "It was his subconscious which told him this---that infuriating part of a person's brain which never responds to interrogation, merely gives little meaningful nudges and then sits humming quietly to itself, saying nothing."
Author: Douglas Adams

11. "Saying nothing... sometimes says the most."
Author: Emily Dickinson

12. "To me, the summer wind in the Midwest is one of the most melancholy things in all life. It comes from so far away and blows so gently and yet so relentlessly; it rustles the leaves and the branches of the maple trees in a sort of symphony of sadness, and it doesn't pass on and leave them still. It just keeps coming, like the infinite flow of Old Man River. You could -- and you do -- wear out your lifetime on the dusty plains with that wind of futility blowing in your face. And when you are worn out and gone, the wind -- still saying nothing, still so gentle and sad and timeless -- is still blowing across the prairies, and will blow in the faces of the little men who follow you, forever."
Author: Ernie Pyle

13. "As great minds have the faculty of saying a great deal in a few words, so lesser minds have a talent of talking much, and saying nothing."
Author: Francois De La Rochefoucauld

14. "Sala called for more drink and Sweep brought four rums, saying they were on the house. We thanked him and sat for another half hour, saying nothing. Down on the waterfront I could hear the slow clang of a ship's bell as it eased against the pier, and somewhere in the city a motorcycle roared through the narrow streets, sending its echo up the hill to Calle O'Leary. Voices rose and fell in the house next door and the raucous sound of a jukebox came from a bar down the street. Sounds of a San Juan night, drifting across the city through layers of humid air; sounds of life and movement, people getting ready and people giving up, the sound of hope and the sound of hanging on, and behind them all, the quiet, deadly ticking of a thousand hungry clocks, the lonely sound of time passing in the long Caribbean night."
Author: Hunter S. Thompson

15. "You're saying nothing lasts forever, he heard the fellow whine. (Well, pretty trite, he thought.)No, he heard her say. I'm saying with very few exceptions nothing lasts forever, and amongst those exceptions, no work or thought of man is numbered.She went on talking after this, but he homed in on that. That was better, he thought. I liked that."
Author: Iain M. Banks

16. "Can't you just see all those enlightened monkey men sitting around a roaring woodfire around their Buddha saying nothing and knowing everything?"
Author: Jack Kerouac

17. "He: What's the matter with you?Me: Nothing.Nothing was slowly clotting my arteries. Nothing slowly numbing my soul. Caught by nothing, saying nothing, nothingness becomes me. When I am nothing they will say surprised in the way that they are forever surprised, "but there was nothing the matter with her."
Author: Jeanette Winterson

18. "Saying nothing, she went to the bed he had devised and lay down upon it stiffly, settling a hip carefully as she turned onto her side. Leaves compressed. Twigs crackled. She lay very still, eyes squinched closed, jaws clenched, trying to breathe normally and hoping shadow shielded her face. Silence. "Well?" he asked at last. "It would be better with a cloak thrown over it, but we have none. I left it with the horse." She smelled dampness, sap, and earth. She would not tell him the truth: even a cloak over the bedding would offer her little comfort. "It will do," she said quietly, tucking a leaf down from her mouth. He nodded. "Get up." "But I only just—" "Please." She got up, as requested, picking leaves and twigs from her hair and kirtle. Mutely she watched as he lay down in her place, testing the bed. He was silent. Then, with infinite irony, "You are polite."
Author: Jennifer Roberson

19. "And the inner dynamics of Hollywood are like politics. Say you give a script to a group of executives - they all sit around, afraid to voice an opinion, saying nothing, waiting to know what the consensus is. Just like focus groups, opinion polls or a cabinet."
Author: Joe Eszterhas

20. "Of course he was a politician. He had a lot of experience in saying nothing in a hundred words or more."
Author: Kaje Harper

21. "...and it's a strange thing happening here cause nobody saying nothing and we still managing to have us a conversation."
Author: Kathryn Stockett

22. "It was Gideon who finally broke the silence, which gave me a certain satisfaction. "What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?" The way he asked, he sounded almost embarrassed."What?""It's what my mother always used to when I was little. If I was looking straight ahead and saying nothing, like you right at this moment.""You have a mother?" Only when I'd said it did I realize what a silly question it was! Oh, for heaven's sake!Gideon raised one eyebrow. "What did you expect?" he asked, amused. "You thought I was an android put together by Uncle Falk and Mr. George?""Well, it's not such an outlandish idea. Do you have photos of yourself as a baby?" Trying to imagine a baby Gideon with a round, soft plump-cheeked face and a bald head made me grin."
Author: Kerstin Gier

23. "I said nothing. I'm good at saying nothing. I don't like talking. I could go the rest of my life without saying another word, if I had to."
Author: Lee Child

24. "In art it is hard to say anything as good as saying nothing."
Author: Ludwig Wittgenstein

25. "We can't stop staring at each other. Saying nothing, nothing to say. I trace the curve of his jaw and throat, the sweet spot below his ear, with only my eyes, because he's too faraway to touch. We stare and we stare and I can't stop myself from smiling, because he's smiling, too. We don't have to speak to have this conversation; in fact, the only way to have it is by not using words."
Author: Megan Hart

26. "Being relevant simply consists in paying close attention to the point that is being talked about and saying nothing that is not significantly related to it."
Author: Mortimer J. Adler

27. "How big are souls anyway?" asked Coraline.The other mother sat down at the kitchen table and leaned against the back wall, saying nothing. She picked at her teeth with a long crimson-varnished fingernail, then she tapped the finger, gently, tap-tap-tap against the polished black surface of her black button eyes."
Author: Neil Gaiman

28. "I am waltzing with death, flirting with him, but he stands there smiling and saying nothing because he does not need to woo or be wooed: he knows he gets us all in the end."
Author: Nenia Campbell

29. "To say a poem is absolute is saying nothing, because an ink blot can be absolute. Yet you put into it what you like. So it becomes totally relative."
Author: Nicholas Mosley

30. "Oh, Jeeves,' I said; 'about that check suit.'Yes, sir?'Is it really a frost?'A trifle too bizarre, sir, in my opinion.'But lots of fellows have asked me who my tailor is.'Doubtless in order to avoid him, sir.'He's supposed to be one of the best men in London.'I am saying nothing against his moral character, sir."
Author: P.G. Wodehouse

31. "The finest command of language is often shown by saying nothing."
Author: Roger Babson

32. "Kyoko sniffs, unable to speak. Sometimes saying nothing means most of all."
Author: Sandy Fussell

33. "I would see him, Edward.'It was no request; he knew it to be an ultimatum. He shook his head violently, not trusting his voice. Time passed. She was staring at him, saying nothing, and on her face was a look of stunned disbelief, of anguished accusation he knew would haunt him for the rest of his life. But when she spoke, her voice held no hint of tears. It was not a voice to offer either understanding or absolution, spoke of no quarter given, of a lifetime of love denied.'God may forgive you for this,' she said, very slowly and distinctly, 'but I never shall."
Author: Sharon Kay Penman

34. "I stood checked for a moment - awe, not fear, fell upon me - and whist I stood, a solemn wind began to blow, the most mournful that ever ear heard. Mournful! That is saying nothing. It was a wind that had swept the fields of mortality for a hundred centuries."
Author: Thomas De Quincey

35. "Whilst I stood, a solemn wind began to blow—the most mournful that ear ever heard. Mournful! That is saying nothing. It was a wind that had swept the fields of mortality for a thousand centuries. Many times since, upon a summer day, when the sun is at its hottest, I have heard the same wind arising and uttering the same hollow, solemn, Memnonian, but saintly swell: it is in this world the one sole audible symbol of eternity."
Author: Thomas De Quincey

36. "[...] the body is what we lean toward,tensing as it darts, dancing away.but it's the voice that enters us. evensaying nothing. even saying nothingover and over absently to itself"
Author: Tracy K. Smith

37. "And really it would profit little to write down what they said, for they knew each other so well that they could say anything they liked, which is tantamount to saying nothing, or saying such stupid, prosy things, as how to cook an omelette, or where to buy the best boots in London, which have no lustre taken from their setting, yet are positively of amazing beauty within it. For it has come about, by the wise economy of nature, that our modern spirit can almost dispense with language; the commonest expressions do, since no expressions do; hence, the most ordinary conversation is often the most poetic, and the most poetic is precisely that which cannot be written down. For which reasons we leave a great blank here, which must be taken to indicate that the space is filled to repletion."
Author: Virginia Woolf

38. "Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid."
Author: Walter Winchell

39. "They caught up with each other's news casually, leaving long, cosy gaps of silence in which to go to work on their muffins and coffees. Jerome - after two months of having to be witty and brilliant in a strange town among strangers - appreciated the gift of it. People talk about the happy quiet that can exist between two lovers, but this too was great; sitting between his sister and his brother, saying nothing, eating. ~ on the comforts of home."
Author: Zadie Smith

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