Fumbling silence in the White House seeps out over the country like a cold fog over a river bed where no stream runs.

-Acheson, Dean Gooderham
  Letter to Harry S  Truman, 28 May, alluding to the Eisenhower administration. Quoted in David S McLellan and David C  Acheson (eds)  Among Friends: Personal Letters of Dean Gooderham  Acheson (1980).

Silentium, stultorum virtus. Silence is the virtue of fools.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  De Dignitiate et  Augmentis Scientiarum,  Antitheta no.31 (translated by Gilbert  Watts,1640).

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: Atimeto be born, and atimeto die; atimetoplant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; Atimetoweep, and atimeto laugh; atimetomourn, and a time to dance: A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Ecclesiastes 3:1^8.

And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.

-Bible (NewTestament)
Revelation 8:1.

  Unrecorded, unrenowned, Men from whom my ways begin, Here I know you by your ground But I know you not withinö There is silence, there survives Not a moment of your lives.

-Blunden, Edmund Charles
  'Forefathers'.

At midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, When you set your fancies free.

-Browning, Robert
  Asolando, epilogue.

From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy Have I not seen what human things could do? From the loud roar of foaming calumny 180 To the small whisper of the asp paltry few, And subtler venom of the reptile crew, The Janus glance of whose significant eye, Learning to lie with silence, would seem true, And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh, Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy.

-Rochdale
^18  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 4, stanza136.

Deep in my soul that tender secret dwells, Lonely and lost to light for evermore, Save when to thine my heart responsive swells, Then trembles into silence as before.

-Rochdale
  The Corsair,'Medora's Song', canto1, stanza14.

Underall speech there lies a silencethat isbetter. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow asTime.

-Carlyle,Thomas
  Critical and Miscellaneous Essays,'Sir Walter Scott'.

I hope we English will long maintain our grand talent pour le silence.

-Carlyle,Thomas
On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic,'The Hero as King'.

There was neither horizon, cloud, nor sound; of that pink, spread silence even I had become part, belonging as much to sky as to earth.

-Carr, Emily
Klee Wyck, ch.17,'Salt  Water'.

   Theyare spoiling the oldest art in the worldöthe art of pantomime. Theyare ruining the great beauty of silence.

-Chao
  Of the advent of talking pictures. Interview in Motion Picture Magazine, May.

No voice, but oh! the silence sank Like music on my heart.

-Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
  'The Rime of the  Ancient Mariner', pt.6.

Sunset and silence! A man: around him earth savage, earth broken; Beside him two horsesöa plough! Earth savage, earth broken, the brutes, the dawn-man there in the sunset, And the Plough that is twin to the Sword, that is founder of cities!

-Colum, Padraic
  Wild Earth,'The Plougher'.

Lo! all in silence, all in order stand, And mighty folios first, a lordly band: Then quartos their well-ordered ranks maintain, And light octavos fill a spacious plain; See yonder, ranged in more frequented rows, A humbler band of duodecimos.

-Crabbe, George
The Library (published1808), l.128^33.

The most magical moment in the theater is a silence so complete that you can't even hear people breathe. It means that you've got them.

-Cronyn, Hume
  In Time, 2  Apr.

   Silence ruled this land.Out of silence mystery comes, and magic, and the delicate awareness of unreasoning things.

-Dark, Eleanor ne¤  e  O'Reilly pseudonym Patricia O'Rane
The Timeless Land, pt.1,'1788'.

Aye, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, And the sound of iron on stone, And how the silence surged softly backward, When the plunging hoofs were gone.

-de la Mare,Walter
  'The Listeners'.

An horrid stillness first invades the ear, And in that silence we the tempest fear.

-Dryden,John
  Astraea Redux, l.7^8.

Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest.Your still fowl, blinking at youwithout remark, mayall thewhilebesittingonone addled egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.

-Eliot, George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans
  Felix Holt, ch.15.