If your mind isn't open, keep your mouth shut too.
Listen. Don't explain or justify.
In a jazz atmosphere, the audience members were so quiet and respectful of the musicians that you felt you were almost part of a meeting at a church or a temple, where everyone was completely in tune with the sermon and what the whole event was about.
Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference
You know, I had grown up standing on public sidewalks, saying things that people, you know, were very provoked by and were upset by. And - but standing outside that first soldier's funeral, it was eerily quiet.
I think that former leaders are best seen occasionally and not too often heard - particularly on the subject of their successors!
It is not every question that deserves an answer.
The big compliment came from the beer drinkers who didn't know me. They wouldn't drink or move when I sang. If they had their glasses in mid-air, the glasses wouldn't come down.
I don't take much from my own father, because he was a very austere, quiet, private man who would come home from work, go to his parlour and play Beethoven on his piano.
I don't have anything to say about other people's art and their work.
I never argue with people about movies.
I can't get into talking about why another actor left. It has nothing to do with me.
I pretty much keep my mouth quiet and go about my business.
Silence, maiden; thy tongue outruns thy discretion.
You see another side of Draco when he's with his dad. When Draco is with his dad, he doesn't say anything. He keeps his mouth shut. He's sort of bullied by his dad, so he acts very different.
It's always an interesting experience for a politician to be heard in silence, I have to say.
I respect you, I fear you not; and the less you speak of your own greatness, the more I will think of it.
1st Baron Verulam
Sermons remain one of the last forms of public discourse where it is culturally forbidden to talk back.
There are roles I have said no to, but for different reasons. And, I never talk about those because I feel it's disrespectful to say, 'Oh, I said no to this project or that other project.' I'd rather talk about the ones that I said yes to and the reasons why.
If any of you cry at my funeral, I'll never speak to you again!
It has been the most extraordinary occasion, the most comprehensive and controlled display of public grief I am ever likely to witness.
As a musician, I have always refrained from criticizing another artist.
Among friends one has the privilege of saying nothing; the civility consists in the assumption that one's silence will be civilly understood. I can imagine a small gathering of friends who say nothing all evening: they recoil from saying anything that the others don't want to hear; and their silence would be the subtlest courtesy.
The applause of silence. is the only kind that counts.
I think libraries give the feeling that people are there to work. It's a little bit like an artist's colony in the sense that there's some sort of shared experience. There's respect for quiet, more or less, but otherwise, there's activity.
