If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

-Eliot, George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans
^2  Middlemarch, bk.2, ch.20.

I have but one request to make at my departure from this world, it isöthe charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph; for as no man who knows my motives, dare now vindicate them, let no prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them rest in obscurity and peace! Let my memory be left in oblivion, and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can do justicetomycharacter.Whenmycountry takesher place among thenations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written.

-Emmet, Robert
  Speech before being sentenced.

  Your very silence is your confession.

-Euripides
Clytemnestra to Agamemnon, realizing that he plans to sacrifice their daughter, Iphigenia, to secure favourable winds during the Greek expedition against Troy. Iphigenia  Aulidensis, l.1142.

To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock, Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock, From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!

-Gilbert, Sir W(illiam) S(chwenck)
   Trio, The Mikado, act1.

Silence is become his mother tongue.

-Goldsmith, Oliver
  The Good-Natured Man, act 2.

Throughout history it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.

-Haile Selassie originally Prince RasTafari Makonnen
   Address to a special session of the UN General  Assembly, 4 Oct, making him the first head of state to address both that organization and the League of Nations.

That man's silence is wonderful to listen to.

-Hardy,Thomas
  Under the Greenwood Tree, ch.14.

   My poor scapegoat, I almost love you but would have cast, I know, the stones of silence.

-Heaney, SeamusJustin
  North,'Punishment'.

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like Silence, listening To silence.

-Honorius of Autun
  'Ode:  Autumn'.

Elected Silence, sing to me And beat upon my whorled ear, Pipe me to pastures still and be The music that I care to hear.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins
  'The Habit of Perfection'.

And silence sounds no worse than cheers After dying has stopped the ears.

-Housman, A(lfred) E(dward)
  A Shropshire Lad, no.19.

After silence, that whichcomesnearestto expressing the inexpressible is music.

-Huxley, Aldous Leonard
Music  at Night.

There is, then, over the affairs of the armya universal conspiracy of silence, of childlike mysteries, of clannishness, routine and intrigue.

-Jaure'  s, (Auguste MarieJoseph) Jean
  L'Arme¤  e nouvelle.

Calumnies are answered best with silence.

-Jonson, Ben
  Volpone, act 2, sc. 2.

The fellows were practising long shies and bowling lobs and slow twisters. In the soft grey silence he could hear the bump of the balls: and from here and from there through the quiet air the sound of the cricket bats: pick, pack, pock, puck: like drops of water in a fountain falling softly in the brimming bowl.

-Joyce,James Augustine Aloysius
  A Portrait of the Artist as aYoung Man.

I said,'Forgive me, sir,'and plucked the cigar out of his mouth. By the time I got back to my camera, he looked so belligerent he could have devoured me. It was at that instant that I took the photograph. The silence was deafening.

-Karsh,Yousuf
  Recalling how he snapped the celebrated 'bulldog' photograph of Sir Winston Churchill in the Speaker's Chambers, House of Commons, Ottawa, on 30 Dec1941. Karsh:  A Fifty-Year Retrospective.

Sweetly they slept On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept A little noiseless noise among the leaves, Born of the very sign that silence heaves.

-Keats,John
  'I Stood Tip-Toe upon a Little Hill', l.9^12.

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon and eve's one star, Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as the silence round about his lair.

-Keats,John
  Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St.  Agnes and Other Poems, 'Hyperion', bk.1, l.1^5.

Thou still unravished bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time.

-Keats,John
  Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St.  Agnes and Other Poems,'Ode on a Grecian Urn', stanza1.

There was silence in the room. Then a voice, stunning as thunder, clear and common as a trainwhistleöthe voice of a ball-park announcer: 'If you build it, he will come.'

-Kinsella,W(illiam) P(atrick)
  'Shoeless  Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa', a short story later expanded into the novel Shoeless Joe (1982) and filmed as Field of Dreams (1989).