Elizabeth Bowen Quotes

There may be other reasons for a man's not speaking in publick than want of resolution: he may have nothing to say.

We must say something, even when we know nothing.

We all have days where we can't pronounce things or give it the emotion it deserves.

One should never, ever remain silent for fear of complexity,

Books will speak plain when counselors blanch.

Who speaks is not who writes, and who writes is not who is.

Don't sit as if you have nothing to say. You should be bursting with things to say. You just choose at this particular place and time, not to say them.

It is easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.

I like better for one to say some foolish thing upon important matters than to be silent. That becomes the subject of discussion and dispute, and the truth is discovered.

Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better for speech than for stationery.

We are more anxious to speak than to be heard.

I do not foresee a time when I shall feel that I have nothing to say.

Silence hides nothing. Words conceal.

Silence is terrible and painful only to those who have said all and have nothing more to speak of; but to those who never had anything to say— to them silence is simple and easy.

If one doesn't talk about a thing, it has never happened. It is simply expression that gives reality to things.

Two of the biggest conversational blunders you can make are saying something when you should stay silent, and staying silent when you should say something.

Reticences are as revealing as avowals.

I speak because I can to anyone I trust enough to listen.

So it is better to speak, remembering we were never meant to survive.

Go to where the silence is and say something.

I wondered which was harder, in the end. The act of telling, or who you told it to. Or maybe if, when you finally got it out, the story was really all that mattered.

After a lifetime of silence, it is difficult then to speak.

He who does not know how to be silent will not know how to speak.

People often ask me questions that I cannot very well answer in words, and it makes me sad to think they are unable to hear the voice of my silence.

I had always suspected language was quite limited in its ability to communicate the intricate mysteries of truth.