Speech is silvern, silence is golden.
"Be silent, or say something that is better than silence" (German).[626] "Better silence than ill speech" (Swedish).[627] "Talking comes by nature, silence of understanding" (German).[628] "Who speaks, sows; who keeps silence, reaps" (Italian).[629]
Silence seldom does harm.
Least said, soonest mended.
The principle applies still more forcibly to writing. "Words fly, writing remains" (Latin).[630] A man's spoken words may be unnoticed, or forgotten, or denied; but what he has put down in black and white is tangible evidence against him. Therefore "Think much, say little, write less" (Italian).[631] Give Cardinal Richelieu two lines of any man's writing and he needed no more to hang him. Fabio Merto, an archbishop of the seventeenth century, has oddly remarked, "It is nowhere mentioned in the Gospels that our Lord wrote more than once, and then it was on the sand, in order that the wind might efface the writing." "Silence was never written down" (Italian);[632] and "A silent man's words are not brought into court" (Danish).[633] "Hear, see, and say nothing, if you wish to live in peace" (Italian).[634]
A fool's tongue is long enough to cut his own throat.
"Let not the tongue say what the head shall pay for" (Spanish).[635] "The sheep that bleats is strangled by the wolf" (Italian).[636] "He that knows nothing knows enough if he knows how to be silent" (Italian).[637]
A fool's bolt is soon shot.
"A foolish judge passes quick sentence" (French).[638] "He who knows little soon sings it out" (Spanish).[639]
When a fool has spoken he has done all.
"It is always the worst wheel that creaks" (French, Italian).[640] The shallowest persons are the most loquacious. "Were fools silent they would pass for wise" (Dutch).[641]
"Silence answers much" (Dutch).[642]
A man may hold his tongue in an ill time.
"AmyclÆ was undone by silence" (Latin).[643] The citizens having been often frightened with false news of the enemy's coming, made it penal for any one to report such a thing in future. Hence, when the enemy did come indeed, they were surprised and taken. There is a time to speak as well as to be silent.
Spare to speak and spare to speed.
"If the child does not cry the mother does not understand it" (Russian). "Him that speaks not, God hears not" (Spanish).[644]
