Quote of the Day (Thomas Carlyle, on Silence and Speech)

"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."—Scottish historian-essayist Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), “On Sir Walter Scott” (1838)

Quote of the Day (George Bernard Shaw, on Silence and Scorn)

“Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.”—Anglo-Irish dramatist George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Back to Methuselah (1921)

Quote of the Day (George Eliot, on One With Nothing to Say)

“Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.”— George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879)

Quote of the Day (Marianne Moore, on ‘The Deepest Feeling’)

“The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;

not in silence, but restraint."—Marianne Moore, “Silence”

American modernist poet Marianne Moore was born on this date in 1887 near St. Louis, Mo. The lines above are typical of much of her work, in that the line break can feel disorienting. This particular poem is a kind of “envelope poem,” in which the narrator disappears, to be followed by the voice of her father, then back to the narrator. The interplay between the two—a form of “silence,” in and of itself—suggests volumes, even in its “restraint,” on their relationship. Unfortunately, the “deepest feeling” between them might very well not be love.