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Silence   /sˈaɪləns/   Listen
Silence

noun
1.
The state of being silent (as when no one is speaking).  "He gestured for silence"
2.
The absence of sound.  Synonym: quiet.  "The street was quiet"
3.
A refusal to speak when expected.  Synonym: muteness.
4.
The trait of keeping things secret.  Synonyms: secrecy, secretiveness.



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"Silence" Quotes from Famous Books



... step: 1. Route step, 2. MARCH. Sabers are carried at will or in the scabbard; the men carry their pieces at will, keeping the muzzles elevated; they are not required to preserve silence, nor to keep the step. The ranks cover and preserve their distance. If halted from route step, the men stand ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey

... Athenians; the occupations which Plato assigns to the warriors in his Republic, and which but represent the tastes of his century; finally, in our feudal society, the tilts and tourneys,—all these inventions, as well as many others which I pass in silence, from the game of chess, invented, it is said, at the siege of Troy by Palamedes, to the cards illustrated for Charles VI. by Gringonneur, are examples of what labor becomes as soon as the serious motive of utility is separated from it. Labor, real ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... of the sun as it came upon its nearest lines to the magnet where it stood in the center and lowest part of the earth, far enough distant that his rays could not penetrate into the region of the magnet and disturb its silence as it stands in its sea of ice and darkness, while the light of the sun from the outer roads from the magnet was bounded about by darkness and unchanging ice. And towards the west Jehovah had set ...
— The Secret of the Creation • Howard D. Pollyen

... seen in broader light. There is a thought which has haunted me for a year past like a spectre. It comes to me unbidden; sometimes to disturb the quiet of my lonely evenings, sometimes in the silent night-watches to banish sleep from my pillow; sometimes to place silence on my lips as I sit among cherished friends. I never imagined that I would put this thought in words for any mortal ear; yet it is coming to my lips now, and I feel impelled to go on. You believe that there are, as you call them 'conjugal ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur

... are cull'd Out of the powerful regions under earth, Help me this once, that France may get the field. Oh, hold me not with silence over-long! ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams

... also he denied any purpose of subverting the monarchial government, only he had wished that some grievances in the administration of our affairs might be rectified and reformed; but seeing he purged not himself of the rest of his libel, his silence as to these looked like a tacit confession and ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... of sadness that it seemed as if she were already exhaling her soul toward death at the very thought of leaving Francis. As she stood there in silence, her lamb, seized by some strange melancholy, was suddenly ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes

... taking one of their rests, in the latter part of the day, and Winthrop was sitting on the beam of his plough, when for the first time Rufus came and joined him. He sat down in silence and without so much as looking at his brother; and both in that warm and weary day sat a little while quietly looking over the water; or perhaps at the little point of rest, the little brown spot among ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... to Harry that the little man's company were something surprised at this turn, but they took it in a disciplined silence. So the party of four marched up the stairs. You will believe that Harry liked the business ill enough. He shot glances at the two chosen for seconds. There was nothing sottish about them. They were very soberly alert, they had the tan and the vigour of open-air life. They ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... the Manor House," asked he after a short silence, "that aunt is going to return home sooner than she expected when ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... The same spirit of repression arose later in the Theological School at Andover, Mass. There the gag was effectively applied by the faculty, and all inquiry and discussion relating to slavery disappeared among the students. But the attempt to impose silence upon the students of Phillips's Academy near-by was followed by the secession of forty or fifty ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... about me?" exclaimed Lord Reginald, from the other end of the table, for during the sudden silence of those around him he had caught the last words uttered by ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston

... walked in silence for a few yards. By dint of never becoming anything else, we had become very good friends; and presently she remarked, quite confidentially, "He's very ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope

... the Cave; this stone was raised, and was about four feet wide and as many long; beneath it was a square excavation about three feet deep and as many in length and width. In this small nether subterranean chamber, sat in solemn silence one of the human species, a female with her wardrobe and ornaments placed at her side. The body was in a state of perfect preservation, and sitting erect The arms were folded up and the hands were laid ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt

... the fringes of the lake, Nor shook the odors from the scented plant. A silver, misty wreath closed fondly down Above the waveless tide. The insect world Lay waiting in the leaves, as though a spell Had hushed Creation; yet expectant thrills Ran through the silence, for the loaded air Grew lighter, purer, and the recent Rose Drooped her proud head in meekness, and the face Of heaven flushed with burning brilliancy, Above some ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Thanksgiving dinner? She was so elated by the idea that she could hardly get to sleep at all, and before she could settle herself to rest she had killed in her imagination the half dozen or more turkeys she had raised that season. A big dinner given to those who could act as mouthpieces would silence a lot of talk; also, it would take away a certain questioning look the girl feared in Luther's and Aunt Susan's eyes. The latter was the sorest point of her married life, and the conviction that they were thinking ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... say to her new uncle and sat in awkward silence as Aunt Jane ascended the stairs. Her step sounded lightly overhead and Mr. Ball twirled his thumbs absently. "You—you've come a long ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed

... silence came, a silence in which one of the rare ecstasies of life came upon them and snatched them to the third heaven. From the fold of the hill in which they sat, sheltered both by the fell itself, and by the encircling hollies, they ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... vent itself was directed at first against the Ministers, and ridiculously enough the silence imposed on the Press concerning the movements of the troops (le mutisme) was blamed for the defeat at Weissenburg; then the exasperation swung back and was directed against the generals, who were dubbed negligent and incapable, until, ponderously and slowly, it turned ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... silence which followed the boys heard the call of the Beaver Patrol ringing down the ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman

... lower into the car, and attempted to look like a rug. In the silence, while the sentry evidently examined a passport and flashed a lantern over the chauffeur, Nikky cursed the ticking of his watch, the ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the very midnight hour—more or less—when Don Quixote and Sancho quitted the wood and entered El Toboso. The town was in deep silence, for all the inhabitants were asleep, and stretched on the broad of their backs, as the saying is. The night was darkish, though Sancho would have been glad had it been quite dark, so as to find in the darkness ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... exhibited. The most prominent are, therefore, selected, and thrown into one locality—the approach to old London bridge. Our audiences have previously witnessed the procession of Bolingbroke, followed in silence by his deposed and captive predecessor. An endeavor will now be made to exhibit the heroic son of that very Bolingbroke, in his own hour of more lawful triumph, returning to the same city; while thousands ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare

... wrath rising with each word, "I know very well what you were up to, miss. All my things upset. As soon as I found out that I had forgotten my key, I knew very well—" her voice died away into the silence of horror. She had just caught sight of Belinda's ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... walked some way, nearly in silence. Fanny felt very little inclined to talk, and even Kilcullen, with all his knowledge of womankind—with all his assurance, had some difficulty in commencing what he had to get said and done ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... bitter waters that flowed against you? How are your eyes, after all the briny tears that have steeped them? How are your poor nerves, after all the shocks that have agitated them? All these things have been on my mind; but from my long silence, you cannot believe it. What are we all, but broken reeds, which pierce the hand when laid hold of for support? There is but one Friend to poor, fallen, miserable man, in the universe. He is mercy; he is goodness; he is truth; he is wisdom; he is unchangeable, and never ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... long time now since he had made any outcry or complaint at the hard usage he suffered from old Matt. At such times he would shut his teeth and bear whatever came to him, until sometimes the half-drunken old man would be driven almost mad by his stubborn silence. Maybe he would stop in the midst of the beating he was administering, and, grinding his teeth, would cry out: "Won't ye say naught? Won't ye say naught? Well, then, I'll see if I can't make ye say naught." When things had reached ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle

... no mention of the unfortunate occurrences in Spain had been made in any public act of his government, or suffered to transpire in any of the French journals. It was now necessary to break this haughty silence. The Emperor announced accordingly that the peasants of Spain had rebelled against their King; that treachery had caused the ruin of one corps of his army; and that another had been forced, by the English, to evacuate Portugal: demanding two new conscriptions, each of 80,000 men—which ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... in silence, as the dead are wont, And sleep in peace, slain in your country's wars! O sacred receptacle of my joys, Sweet cell of virtue and nobility, How many sons of mine hast thou in store, That thou wilt never render to ...
— The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... abode of splendor(?) before it. I am Horus and (I) traverse millions of years. I have given the decree [for the stablishing of] my throne and I am the ruler thereof; and in very truth, my mouth keepeth an even balance both in speech and in silence. In very truth, my forms are inverted. I am Un-nefer, from one season even unto another, and what I have is within me; [I am] the only One, who proceedeth from an only One who goeth round about in his course. I am he who dwelleth ...
— Egyptian Literature

... little party rode forward in silence, winding in and out between pretty lakes and bunches of timber, with no path to guide them, but with the help of the compass, managing to edge slowly to the west. Charley still maintained the lead, but in the open country through ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... said there is not its like in heaven and earth. At the setting up of this throne, the angels flocked round about it, and the beasts and the elders gathered together to see it (Rev 4). When this throne was set in heaven, there was silence, all the heavenly host had no leisure to talk; they were surprised with sight and wonder. When this throne was set in heaven, what talk there was! it was as the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Mr. Patterson that his doctrine of representation, which was in its principle the genuine one, must for ever silence the pretensions of the small States to an equality of votes with the large ones. They ought to vote in the same proportion in which their citizens would do if the people of all the States were collectively met. He suggested, as a proper ground of compromise, that in the first branch the States ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... surgeon came up and announced the death of our noble captain. Although it had been expected for the last two or three days, the intelligence created a heavy gloom throughout the ship; the men worked in silence, and spoke to one another in whispers. Mr Falcon was deeply affected, and so were we all. In the course of the morning, we ran in to the island, and unhappy as I was, I never can forget the sensation of admiration which I ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... of the carriage-lamps, Bertuccio," said the count, "and show me the apartments." The steward obeyed in silence, but it was easy to see, from the manner in which the hand that held the light trembled, how much it cost him to obey. They went over a tolerably large ground-floor; a second floor consisted of a salon, a bathroom, and two bedrooms; ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... covered it. On the fingers of the left hand glistened two rings which drew our attention. One held a diamond of great price, the other was composed of sapphires and diamonds most curiously arranged. We stood a moment in silence, gazing sadly ...
— The Last American - A Fragment from The Journal of KHAN-LI, Prince of - Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy • J. A. Mitchell

... same matter is also omitted. And about the same time that Mr. Binning's book was printed, while Sir Robert Hamilton was prisoner, upon account of the declaration [Sanquhar Declaration] in 1692, he wrote a letter to Mrs. Binning, wherein he complains of her unwonted silence, in his honourable bonds for such a noble Master. Yet trusting her sympathy is not diminished, he adds, 'O, my worthy friend, I cannot express Christ's love and kindness since the time of my bonds. He hath broke up new treasures of felt love ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... Fuegians were here very troublesome, and to frighten them a rocket was fired at night over their wigwams; it answered effectually, and one of the officers told me that the clamour first raised, and the barking of the dogs, was quite ludicrous in contrast with the profound silence which in a minute or two afterwards prevailed. The next morning not a single ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... nothing to do with the sun. But wherever rocks and gravelly banks protruded, the ice appeared to be peeled off, for in those spots the sun's rays had melted it, though only at mid-day and on the south. All streams and waterfalls slumbered in silence under the snowy blanket. A chill silence reigned over the whole valley. Not a bird was to be seen, not even a snow bunting, only two ravens which kept flying from farmhouse to farmhouse, and even their cawing had ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... darted their whooping assailants. The shutters of both barrooms clapped to, over the way a pair of bull-drivers rushed to their mustangs, there was a patter of hoofs there and of boots here and all inner lights vanished. A watchman's rattle buzzed remotely. Then silence reigned. ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... a bit, and suppose we are still waiting for the magistrate, and think of Last Night. "Silence!"—but from no human voice this time. The whispering, shuffling, and clicking of the court typewriter ceases, the scene darkens, and the court is blotted out as a scene is blotted out from the sight of a man who has thrown himself into ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson

... write, however they might begin, soon turned to bitterness, and I felt that writing bitter letters would not help me to forget the past. But your second letter with its proposal that I should return to Ireland to teach music in a convent school forces me to break silence, and it makes me regret that I gave Father O'Grady permission to write to you; he asked me so often, and his kindness is so winning, that I could not refuse him anything. He said you would certainly have begun to see that you had done ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... at his feet, he struck it with his staff and said: "Thou seemest to be forsaken and uncared-for, like myself. I have been bidden by none; neither have I invited any: I now invite thee!" That night as he and his wife were sitting down alone to supper, a venerable old man entered the room in silence and took his share of the delicacies provided. In those days the New Year's feast was kept up for eleven days together; and the stranger's visit was repeated in the same absolute silence for six nights. At last the host, alarmed ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... humane general would in vain have recommended mercy to such soldiers; but Tilly never made the attempt. Left by their general's silence masters of the lives of all the citizens, the soldiery broke into the houses to satiate their most brutal appetites. The prayers of innocence excited some compassion in the hearts of the Germans, but none in the rude breasts of Pappenheim's Walloons. Scarcely ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.

... affected indifference to censure, until his child's heart had grown case-hardened and steely; asking nothing, doing his tasks for his own satisfaction, and finally taking a sad pleasure in that silence which was so frequently imposed upon him. Then he had grown up, and the sullen determination to outdo his brother in everything had got possession of his strong nature. He remembered how, coming home from school, he had presented his mother with the report ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... him as he fell. This feat accomplished, they all breathed more freely; and crouching down on the ground to avoid being seen, they listened attentively to ascertain if any one was moving, before they again put themselves in motion. Not a sound disturbed the silence of the night; and, satisfied that they were not discovered, they crept cautiously on towards the eastward, under the shadow of the wall, in the manner Nina had led Fleetwood on the previous night. It still wanted an hour and a half to the time he had desired Ada to be prepared; ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... turned upon the speaker sharply, and fixed him with their eyes, as if doubtful about the state of his mind, gazing at him in silence, till he ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn

... fight as privates in the battles of freedom, with all the more devotion and patriotism because their names will never be known by the world whose benefactors they are. One name, however, which may find no place in the official records, cannot be passed over here in silence. In ancient times when great works were constructed, a goddess was chosen, to whose tender care they were dedicated. Thus the ruins of the Acropolis to-day recall the name of Pallas Athene to an admiring ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley

... as the years run on, and that one long mistaken for a mere erratic comet— sans substance, or unformed nebulae hanging like a splotch of semi-luminous vapor in a great void. Year by year the voice of Carlyle rings clearer and clearer from the "Eternal Silence." And as we listen with rapt attention to the music of the spheres becoming audible, intelligible to our dull ear—the Waterloo and Lisbon earthquakes, the Revolutions and the Warring Religions, all the glory and shame, the wild loves and bitter hatreds of ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... answer to an inquiry regarding his own procedure, has gone to the heart of the matter. "I go into the business," he said, "with all the intelligence, patience, silence, and other gifts and virtues that I have ... and on the whole try to keep the whole matter simmering in the living mind and memory rather than laid up in paper bundles or otherwise laid up in the inert way. For this certainly turns out to be a ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... Kronos did to him. The fact is that the doings of Kronos, and the sufferings which his son inflicted upon him, even if they were true, ought not to be lightly told to young and simple persons; if possible, they had better be buried in silence. But if there is an absolute necessity for their mention, a very few might hear them in a mystery, and then let them sacrifice not a common (Eleusinian) pig, but some huge and unprocurable victim; this would have the effect ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller

... the Partridge, testifies his appreciation of melody after quite a primitive fashion. Passing through the woods, on some clear, still morning in March, while the metallic ring and tension of winter are still in the earth and air, the silence is suddenly broken by long, resonant hammering upon a dry limb or stub. It is Downy beating a reveille to Spring. In the utter stillness and amid the rigid forms we listen with pleasure, and as it comes to my ear oftener at this season than at any other, I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... wanted to go. In the silence of the night the curse of the Trewinion's became terrible to me, and I was anxious to know how I could avert it. Besides, so much had my mind been filled with stories of the superstitious and wonderful that I felt afraid to disobey the old woman's ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking

... the old-fashioned stocks! He was fairly entrapped, and though he foamed, and swore, and threatened, it all did no manner of good. Of this he at length became sensible, and grinding his teeth in impotent rage, he relapsed into dogged silence. ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... how they eat! Let the man who affirmed before the Recruiting Commission that the present scale of military rations was liberal enough show himself now, and then for ever hide his head! The troopers seem to have become sudden converts to Carlyle's theory on the eloquence of silence. It reigns supreme, broken only by the rattle of knives and forks and by an occasional gurgle indicative of a man judiciously stratifying the solids and liquids, for a space of about twenty minutes, by which time—be ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... occurred to everybody in the silence of that dark and solemn gorge, whose sombre aspect was enough to daunt the most courageous; but somehow that night, in spite of the riskiness of their position, no ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn

... often told in silence," he read—the very letters of the words seemed to scorch his eyes with prophetic fires. "A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... then, after long periods of silence, that the labor movement puts in its claim for notice. All is quiet. The kind old world spins on, and the bourgeois masters clip their coupons in smug complacency. But the grim and ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London

... demonstrations of joy, amongst people of condition, were chiefly confined to one sex; few gentlemen were to be seen on the streets, or in the windows; and even amongst the inferior people, many shewed their dislike by a stubborn silence. ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson

... another obstacle; the one which had kept me silent from the day I had first seen Dorgan driving his track-layers. With a crushing sense of degradation I realized the full force of the motive for silence, as I had not up to this time. With every fiber of me protesting that I must be loyal to my employers at any and all costs, that other loyalty, the tie that binds the branded, proved the stronger. I could not bring myself to the point of sending Dorgan, ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde

... whom silence was painful; he fidgeted about, evidently bursting with talk, and yet feeling compelled to follow his own injunction of silence. Presently he reached into his capacious pocket and handed me a little paper-covered booklet. I took it, curious, ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson

... manner put me in a socialist mood. He was hateful to me. I listened in morose silence. He felt piqued, and he wilted. The ginger went out of his voice. My taciturnity continued, until, gradually, he edged over to my side of the controversy, taking up the cudgels for education and spiritual excellence with ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... they sat there for a moment in silence, was not seeing him alone as the Reverend Saunders. She was seeing him as product of something which had begun way back across the centuries, seeing far back of the Reverend Saunders that spirit of intolerance ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... of Edward the third.] It is by no means to be passed ouer in silence, that Matthew Gourney, being a most valiant warriour in the reigne of Edward the third, lyeth buried at a certaine towne, in the countie of Somerset, commonly called Stoke vnder Hamden: who deceased in the 96. yeare of his age: and that (as it is manifest by the inscription of his monument) ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt

... ran over to where Dietz and Johnson lay, giving each a hard kick. The soldiers suffered the violence in silence. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock

... devoting himself to such a heathenish occupation, for he was deeply penetrated by the Christian sentiments of his family, and he had even succeeded in inflaming the sons of Porphyrius, who had been baptized at an early age, with zeal for their faith. The merchant perceived this and submitted in silence, for the boys must be and remain Christians in consequence of the edict referring to wills; but the necessity for confessing a creed which was hateful to him was so painful and repulsive to a nature which, though naturally magnanimous was not very steadfast, that he was anxious to spare his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... we reposed under the Japanese roof of Diou-djen-dji—the thin old wooden roof scorched by a hundred years of sunshine, vibrating at the least sound, like the stretched-out parchment of a tomtom—in the silence which prevails at two o'clock in the morning, we heard overhead a sound like a regular wild huntsman's ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... forgotten towns of Classis and Caesarea, or from Ferrara through all the bitter desolation of Comacchio, or across the endless marsh from Bologna or Faenza, its wide and empty horizons, its astonishing silence, and the difficulty of every approach will seem to you but a fitting environment for a place so solitary and ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... deep feels round its thousand shores To find remembered respite, and far drawn Through weed-strewn shelves and crannies of the coast The myriad silence yearns to myriad speech. O sea that yearns a day, shall thy tongues be So eloquent, and heart, shall all thy tongues Be dumb to speak thy longing? Say I hold Life as a broken jewel in my hand, And fain would buy a little ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody

... sense of humour in poetry; he has great powers of recasting scenes of long-forgotten centuries; he has a fine musical rhythm; but he has not, I think, pathos. I think it is a pity that he does not write epics on events of the day; he might easily find the Poet Laureate's silence an inspiration; he might write another great poem; it might be better than ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... cried the executive officer—for all work was required to be performed in silence. "Walk away with ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic

... occasion well excused. I will spare you the description of my dress; were I writing to a woman I would go into all these details; but as I know they would not be to your taste, I will pass all these uninteresting particulars over in silence, and proceed to more important matter. Paris and Versailles were filled with various reports. Thro'out the city, within, without the castle, all manner of questions were asked, as tho' the monarchy itself was in danger. Couriers ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... enough." Think of it: grave men and women, and modest maidens, sitting there with calm, impassive countenances, motionless as death, the pikes of the soldiery closing about them in a circle of bristling steel! Brave and true ones! Not in vain did ye thus oppose God's silence to the Devil's uproar; Christian endurance and calm persistence in the exercise of your rights as Englishmen and men to the hot fury of impatient tyranny! From your day down to this, the world has been the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... silence. Their eyes met in a long, earnest look. An impulse of tenderness came over her, and she threw both arms about his neck as he clasped her to his breast. The stars were shining above and the water breaking at their feet. They ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt

... thought of having been in such extremity caused Richard to fall into another silence. The Marchioness, having arranged the bedclothes more comfortably, and felt that his hands and forehead were quite cool, cried a little more, and then applied herself to getting tea ready, and making some thin ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... dying, he expressed the most unaffected sympathy for the condition in which the Duke of Anjou would be placed by his death. "Alas, poor Prince!" he cried frequently; "alas, what troubles will now beset thee!" The surgeons enjoined and implored his silence, as speaking might cause the wound to prove immediately fatal. He complied, but wrote incessantly. As long as his heart could beat, it was impossible for him not to be ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... put us out among the rude multitude."—Fox's Journal. Vol. i, p. 169. "It would be ashame, if your mind should falter and give in."—Collier's Meditations of Antoninus, p. 94. "They stared awhile in silence one upon another."—Rasselas, p. 73. "After passion has for awhile exercised its tyrannical sway."—Murray's Gram., ii, 135 and 267. "Though set within the same general-frame of intonation."—Rush, on the Voice, p. 339. "Which do not carry any of the natural ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... pretending to love it. I adore it, for my part, and I wish I was going alone, for my hens will be sure to cackle mal 'a propos, and spoil some famous melody with talking about it, and who sung it in London, instead of listening to it, and thanking God for it in deep silence." ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... vexed to reply; so the pair kept on in silence, save for the tired footsteps of the boy and the loud flumping of the jelly-fish on the damp sand of the shore. Near sundown they reached a broad field where ripe grain of some sort seemed to be growing, and ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam

... exclaims the physician, "the Heavenly Father has ordained that in anguish shall woman bring forth her young." The other deliberated on the compassion of the Benevolent Father in silence, and continued on his rounds ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... silence ensued. Each of the two girls was thinking her own thoughts. The thickening on the horizon meanwhile was increasing. Thin films of vapor began to blow across the sky. The wind stirred and grew chill; the surf on the beach broke with a low roar which had a menacing sound. Suddenly a wall of mist ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge

... ourselves to dread; To see at night his empty bed; To feel the silence and the gloom That hovers o'er his vacant room, And though we wept the day he went, And many a lonely hour we've spent, We've come to think as he, somehow, And we are more contented now; We're proud that we can stand and say We have a boy who's gone away. And we are glad to know ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest

... the dagger under his coat. On that occasion Bonaparte owed his life only to the irresolution of the young 'illuminato' who wished to sacrifice him to his fanatical fury. It is equally certain that on another occasion, respecting which the author of the St. Helena narrative observes complete silence, another fanatic—more dangerous than Steps attempted the life ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... necessary to extricate himself from a dilemma. Unhappily, like thousands of other scrupulous people, he could "strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel;" for it was just as much a lie to deceive his father by his silence as it was by ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic

... no more for a moment, but puffed at his cob pipe in thought and silence. I had no notion of involving myself in any combat of morals or theology, so I did not invade his mood. At last I suggested in a half-tone of inoffensive sympathy that the West was ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis

... as the light faded in the west. Hers were not revealed. And the silence between them seemed gradually to grow into a pact, to become a subtler and more intimate element than speech. A faint tang of autumn smoke was in the air, a white mist crept along the running waters, a silver moon like a new-stamped coin rode triumphant in the sky, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... to speak with innocent candour and simplicity of all that she saw, and her listeners would be filled with admiration at the histories she would relate from Holy Writ; but their questions and remarks having sometimes disturbed her peace of mind, she determined to keep silence on such subjects for the future. In her innocence of heart, she thought that it was not right to talk of things of this sort, that other persons never did so, and that her speech should be only Yea, yea, and Nay, nay, or Praise be to Jesus Christ. The visions ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich

... passed within a few feet of him, seemed almost deserted. Once a cart came lumbering by, and the man who lay there, watching, drew closely back into the shadows. A youth on a bicycle passed, singing to himself. A boy and girl strolled by, arm in arm, happy, apparently, in their profound silence. Only a couple of fields away shone the red and green lights of the railway track. Every few minutes the goods-trains went rumbling over the metals. The man on the ground heard them with a shiver. Resolutely he kept his face turned in the opposite direction. The night mail went thundering ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... way, ye tender mothers and sober fathers of Christian families, a prodigious thing that theory of life is, as orally learnt at a great public school. Why! if you could hear those boys of fourteen who blush before their mothers, and sneak off in silence in the presence of their daughters, talking among each other, it would be the woman's turn to blush then. Before Pen was twelve years old, and while his mother thought him an angel of candour, little Pen had heard enough to make him quite awfully wise upon certain ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... my voice, that I might silence him a little, "Barbarous dog!" said I, "what are you doing? I won't have one creature touched more upon pain of death. I charge you upon your life to stop your hands, and stand still here, or you are a dead man ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... licht in the kitchen window; nae wonder ye're nickering (neighing); ... it's been a stiff journey; a'm tired, lass ... a'm tired tae deith," and the voice died into silence. ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren

... know—they who have borne so long, in grimly impotent silence, under the guise of Freedom, the fortunes of the slave—can we for one moment doubt what view their lawful, reasoning demand for redress will take and whether or no it will prevail? The hundred million voices of the ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... understood a word of their tongue. We Anglo-Saxons abroad have not a reputation for being polyglot, and I never advertise my own small linguistic attainments unless specially called upon to do so. I do not care particularly for the trouble of talking myself, and one scores sometimes by a taste for silence. I made rather a good point that way once in a ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... three pupils were always to be found kneeling, telling their beads. The discipline, in contradistinction to the customary practice of the time, was mild, though all punishments were carefully prescribed by rule. [18] The rule of silence in the school was rigidly enjoined, all speech was to be in a low tone of voice, and a code of signals replaced speech for ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... about his hair standing on end, to hear a minister defending the novel; but it did not interrupt the general silence. Silence is unnoticed when people sit before a fire; it would be intolerable if they sat and looked ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... and a long silence came between them. The cold dawn that was creeping over the land stole into the office with them and found the fires of affection turned to the ashes of unwelcome memory. The woman seemed to realize at last, for she gave ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... which followed this noble appeal suddenly dropped into a deadly silence as the lank form of Mr Bickers appeared in the doorway. Arthur rapidly lost himself in the crowd. The two prefects, with flushed faces, elbowed their way into the room as though just arrived to quell the uproar. A few boys snatched up books and flopped down at ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed

... or far more heretical than it is, it would not much edify or corrupt the present generation. The men of our time are not to be converted or perverted by quartos. A few more days, and this essay will follow the Defensio Populi to the dust and silence of the upper shelf. The name of its author, and the remarkable circumstances attending its publication, will secure to it a certain degree of attention. For a month or two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing-room, and a few columns in every magazine; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... down from the embankment. Those on the promontory leaned far over. All became silent, in expectation. The man on guard drew the sheet once more over the corpse. In the midst of the silence, the sea barely seemed to draw its breath, the acacias barely rustled. And then through the silence they could hear her cries as she ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... it could not be doubted but the King was in a condition of continuing the war with honour, so it could not be looked on as a mark of weakness in His Majesty to break the silence he had kept since the conferences at Gertruydenberg; and that, before the opening of the campaign, he now gives farther proof of the desire he always had to procure the repose of Europe. But after what he hath found, by experience, of the sentiments of those persons who ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... too pitiable a condition for me to continue upbraiding him any longer. We walked in silence by the side of each other in the saddest manner possible, until we reached the first village on our road. Here we made a halt, in order to deliberate upon what we should do. My unfortunate companion was expelled ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... first time after the present recess. On Count Eulenburg's entrance the discussion abruptly ceased; after a long interval the President called on the last speaker to continue the debate. Silence! The President thereupon declared the sitting adjourned. This was the signal for great tumult and clamor. No order, it was urged, should be bestowed on any member during the session of the Reichstag; the Monarch may not be mentioned during the session. The House adjourns ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... beneath the trees, And purple stains, where the finches pass, Leap in the stalks of the deep, rank grass. Flutter of-wing, and the buzz of bees, Deepen the silence, and ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray

... Sarah kept a silence which might have been considered either sulky or dignified, and Mrs Clay responded in low tones to her ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin

... possibility of feeding, there was such agitation over the question of starvation as would have subjected me to violence had my city been nearer the equator. In all these cases I was compelled to have a post-mortem to silence heathen raging. In one case in which a young man had died after weeks of inability to take food, even one of my medical brethren carried the conviction with him for years, and without seeking to inform himself, that there was a death from starvation. ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... where for the next few minutes he could be heard bustling Harrison, the clerk, to make haste; then a hansom was whistled for, there were footsteps down the old stairs, the sounds of a departing vehicle on the uneven stones, and after that silence and solitude. ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... is the grasshopper's, he takes the lead In summer luxury; he has never done With his delights, for when tired out with fun He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never: On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever; And seems to one in drowsiness half lost The grasshopper's among some grassy ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy

... breed or to foster scandal about their own names or their own homes. The man that has a secret cancer on his person will be the last to speak of cancers in reference to others; and if the truth of his own case be suspected at all, it will rather be from his silence than from his speech. We can hardly think Shakespeare was so wanting in a sense of propriety as to have written the passages in question, but that he knew no man could say he was exposing the foulness of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... he hung. The slow noise of his breathing only intensified the complete silence outside. The well padded suit encompassed him so gently there was no sense of pressure on his body to make up for the weightlessness. Johnny felt as though he were bodiless, a naked brain with eyes only ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor

... scene changed completely. Instead of the bustle of a large city, silence reigned, broken only by the lapping of the waters and the cries of the gondoliers as they plied their oars; it is a city full of charm but full of sadness. Even the Palace of the Doges, splendid though it be, is sad; we walked through halls whose vaulted roofs have long ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... impression. An eloquent Italian has described this striking spectacle:—"A vast solitude, stretching for miles, as far as the eye can reach. No shelter, no resting-place, no defence for the wearied traveller; a dead silence, interrupted only by the sound of the wind which sweeps over the plain, or the trickling of a natural fountain by the wayside; not a cottage nor the curling of smoke to be seen; only here and there a cross ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... Philadelphia, appeared, a little later the dramatic "conscience-story," "William Wilson," with its clear-cut pictures of school-life at old Stoke-Newington. The Baltimore Book gave the thrilling fable, "Silence," to the world. The weirdly beautiful "Haunted Palace" and "The Fall of the House of Usher" followed in ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... Hutton's Dictionary of Mathematics, under Hariot, 1796, 2 volumes in quarto. This publication gave an air of solemn record and history to the transactions, insomuch that Oxford began to be blamed for withholding from the press Dr Zach's great work. Oxford preserved a becoming silence. In 1803 Dr Zach published at Gotha in his Monatliche Correspondenz a fragment of that remarkable letter from the Earl of Northumberland to Hariot (which letter we have shown to be Lower's, see p. 120). This publication, together with the reprint of the original Berlin ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens

... with the deputation of Parliament which pressed for a decision. What she mainly represented to them was, how hard it was for her, after she had pardoned so many rebellions, and passed over so much treason in silence, to let a princess be punished, who was her nearest blood-relation: men would accuse her, the Virgin Queen, of cruelty: she prayed them to supply her with another means, another expedient: nothing under the ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... of the wanderers who watched the boiling of their mess, or fed the embers with dry sticks. Round other fires, having finished the eating of their couscousson, the Bedouins lay full-length; enjoying the solemn silence which they love so little to break, and smoking their long pipes; while through the shadows about them glided the lofty figures of their brethren, with the folds of their sweeping burnous floating ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... brief questions and answers, and, in gloomy silence, we followed the detective up the heavily carpeted stair, along a corridor lined with pictures and busts, and into a large library. A group of people were in this room, and one, in whom I recognized Chalmers Cleeve, of Harley Street, was bending over a motionless form ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... gallery at picture after picture—bright, soulless, accomplished things—and asked myself how it was possible for men and women to spend their time so elaborately to no purpose; and then one catches sight of some little sketch—a pool in the silence of high summer, the hot sun blazing on tall trees full of leaf, and rich water-plants, with a single figure in a moored boat, musing dreamily; and at once one is transported into a region of thrilled wonder. What is it all about? What is this sudden glimpse ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... came in a spontaneous general outburst in one form of words or another from the crowd. After a brief silence, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... uncomfortable influence, which breathes from some men, is produced in various ways. Sometimes it is the result of mere stiffness and awkwardness of manner: and there are men whose stiffness and awkwardness of manner are such as would freeze the most genial and silence the frankest. Sometimes it arises from ignorance of social rules and proprieties; sometimes from incapacity to take, or even to comprehend, a joke. Sometimes it proceeds from a pettedness of nature, which keeps you ever in fear ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... be an offer of suzerainty or subjugation. Two courses were advocated; one by Kyoto, the other by Kamakura. The former favoured a policy of conciliation and delay; the latter, an attitude of contemptuous silence. Kamakura, of course, triumphed. After six months' retention the envoys were sent away without so much as a written acknowledgment. The records contain nothing to show whether this bold course on the part of the Bakufu had ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... silence came down between them. John was drinking coffee with an air of being alone in the room, pretending that he hadn't heard and didn't ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair

... to the capital Charles passed in review the soldiers assembled on Blackheath. Betrayed by their general, abandoned by their leaders, surrounded as they were by a nation in arms, the gloomy silence of their ranks awed even the careless king with a sense of danger. But none of the victories of the New Model were so glorious as the victory which it won over itself. Quietly, and without a struggle, as men who bowed to the inscrutable will of God, the farmers and traders who had dashed ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... censorious, and instances of his magnanimity are many. Severity of judgment is a custom that few of us can afford, and to be generous is never a mistake. Harte was extremely sensitive, and he deplored controversy. He was quite capable of suffering in silence if defense of self might reflect on others. His deficiencies were trivial but damaging, and their heavy retribution he bore with dignity, retaining the respect ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... way these men went about calling a halt to all activities. Like a perfect, well oiled machine which slows down and then ceases its movements, until there is something tremendously impressive in its inaction and silence; like a well-drilled army which retreats magnificently and in its very retreat almost gains a victory, so much like all this, was the action and the work of these men at this time. They were obeyed as only the Germans know how to obey. By ...
— Ted Marsh on an Important Mission • Elmer Sherwood



Words linked to "Silence" :   quiesce, hush, sound, stillness, mum, shout down, lull, conspiracy of silence, condition, soundlessness, stamp down, quiet, subdue, pipe down, quiet down, muzzle, louden, silent, status, suppress, quietness, wall of silence, shut up, muteness, gag, shush, blue wall of silence, conquer, speechlessness, curb, hush up, calm down, sound property, uncommunicativeness, inhibit



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