Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
| NUMBER: | 1691 |
| AUTHOR: | Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) |
| QUOTATION: | Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | Carlyle refers to this theme elsewhere, one example being: “As the Swiss Inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden (Speech is silvern, Silence is golden); or as I might express it: Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity.”—Carlyle, Sartor Resartus and Selected Prose, book 3, chapter 3, p. 205 (1970). |
| SUBJECTS: | Silence |