Unspoken Quotes

“An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.”
― Martin Buber

“She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here to be where she was.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Vol 1 of 8

“When words remain unspoken and emotions are left unexpressed, just a glint in the eyes from otherness can inflame the mind and rouse a shower of empathy. ("Only needed a light ")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“That we may not fall short of desire, but let us give way to the unspoken passion hidden in the closet of our discretion. (“Crépuscule du désir”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“I had a dream about you. It's been a while since I could remember any of my dreams, and still, this one has left me with such strong impression. Even now, when I am fully awake, your face flashes before my eyes. It's a face I can totally relate to, as if it wasn't any more yours than it is mine. Terrifying thing, you know? I can't say I've felt that sort of intimacy with anyone. For a moment you knew all my secrets, without me even having to tell them. For a moment I even knew them myself…

While I was looking into your eyes, I suddenly started to realize things about myself that were unspoken for years, like fragments of my inner life that were deeply repressed. It’s hard to distinguish if they were buried inside because dealing with them was such a dirty work, or if leaving them unnamed meant that it was not possible to define them precisely enough, so they would keep their true meaning. Perhaps, all this life that I've known so far was in fact no more but a dream about living. The only thing that has kept me in touch with reality was you…

I know it comes as a surprise, and you may be wondering why it took me so long to come clean. You also may be wondering how come you've never noticed before. I've tricked you on purpose, yes, and you must realize it really has nothing to do with you. It’s always been me. This is why, seeing you in my dream like that, came out as a shock. You also must forgive me. You must forgive me because I know how it looks like, that everything we ever shared was a lie, and it wasn't…

I am more of an illusionist that a deceiver, but it all comes from being in fact, a very private person. Even if it was true that you knew me better than anyone, I’d never admit it. I’d rather dig my own heart out, with a rotten spoon, than admitting it. I may let people in my own little world occasionally, but I would never let them be aware of it. I don’t throw my intimacy in front of others, especially when I care. The more I care, the less I give away, and this is something for you to understand, and grant me your forgiveness. I didn't play my tricks on you in order to deceive you, but rather to save myself, and maybe even deceive myself as well. I’ve had hidden my feelings for you so deeply that I've learned to live with them, as if any other casualty. I have done wrong to myself as much as I did to you, and I don’t know if I can forgive myself. So now I wonder, could you forgive me without feeling sorry for me? I certainly don’t deserve your pity. Especially not now that I am awake.”
― Aleksandra Ninkovic, Dreaming is for lovers

“I open my eyes.
I want to know:
what is in the abyss of a kiss?
Are stars born in these black caves
that house bated breaths and unspoken words?
Do our souls crawl on these tender cheeks
to greet one another by ivory gates?
What happens when we kiss?
Where do you go?
Don’t tell me.
For I have lost my desire to know.
Kiss me
so that I forget myself.
I close my eyes
and fall in the abyss.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“I'd never learned how to relate to people, much less how to speak up for myself. I preferred to sit and rage quietly.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen

“If I love you, is that any of your business?”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“She wiped sweat from her brow and took one last glance at her tiny Chicago apartment, the peeling paint and dingy windows a stark reminder of the life she was leaving behind.”
― Stella Sinclaire, Fertile Ground for Murder

“Still, she really did seem to be absurdly into this. It was almost existentially unsettling, that two people in such close physical proximity could be experiencing the same moment so differently.”
― Kristen Roupenian, You Know You Want This

“There are things you want to say but don't
There are things I want to say but I already said them
A year ago or two or five, when we first met
There were times I thought you knew I loved you
You never knew
We never were
I died
You died
That's it”
― Dorothea Lasky, Rome: Poems

“But we always avoided talking about these things—difficult things—and I wondered if that meant we'd be a little uncomfortable with or disappointed by each other for the rest of our lives.”
― Catherine Lacey, Nobody Is Ever Missing

“I felt so ashamed with them because everything in their life was going so well and they were so sort of successful. I couldn't talk about what I wanted with them and they were always in a hurry.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“The unspoken words trembled in the air.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“We are wounded by the words people speak, but we die from the ones that were never spoken.”
― Shakieb Orgunwall

“Smiling at an echo of his voice on my mind’s stage, I felt the void of all I hadn’t said.”
― Aspen Matis, Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir

“The unspoken word never does harm.”
― Kossuth

“Expression of speech .. in what is written or said forget not that silence is also expressive,
That anguish as hot as the hottest and contempt as cold as the coldest may be without words,
That the true adoration is likewise without words and without kneeling.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“I call this our Thursday special. We have it regularly."
This was a lie.
In all the years not one single dish resembled another. Was this one from the deep green sea? Had that one been shot from blue summer air? Was it a swimming food or a flying food, had it pumped blood or chlorophyll, had it walked or leaned after the sun? No one knew. No one asked. No one cared.
The most people did was stand in the kitchen door and peer at the baking-powder explosions, enjoy the clangs and rattles and bangs like a factory gone wild where Grandma stared half blindly about, letting her fingers find their way among canisters and bowls.
Was she conscious of her talent? Hardly. If asked about her cooking, Grandma would look down at her hands which some glorious instinct sent on journeys to be gloved in flour, or to plumb disencumbered turkeys, wrist-deep in search of their animal souls. Her gray eyes blinked from spectacles warped by forty years of oven blasts and blinded with strewings of pepper and sage, so she sometimes flung cornstarch over steaks, amazingly tender, succulent steaks! And sometimes dropped apricots into meat loaves, cross-pollinated meats, herbs, fruits, vegetables with no prejudice, no tolerance for recipe or formula, save that at the final moment of delivery, mouths watered, blood thundered in response. Her hands then, like the hands of Great-grandma before her, were Grandma's mystery, delight, and life. She looked at them in astonishment, but let them live their life the way they must absolutely lead it.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“Ludens thought, why can't I do that, why can't I just ask a woman to hold my hand, why can't I ask Franca to!”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“Love is hearing you with words unspoken when you need me most.”
― Nitya Prakash

“She lifted her hand and placed it on his chest, the exquisite little heartbeat radiating through her touch. Helen smiled, realizing she had found in this soft bundle something strong—unconquerable, even.

Something greater than any obstacle they might face as they made their way through the dark night. It was his soul, the unspoken words inside him that he wasn’t quite ready to tell her, but oh, they were there.”
― Corinne Beenfield, The Ocean's Daughter :

“In 1959, women were told they needed to cultivate their “daintiness”—today it's couched as “femininity,” but the unspoken message has stayed the same. The fact that the message is framed as empowerment doesn't change the deficit mentality behind it.”
― Ina Park, Strange Bedfellows: Adventures in the Science, History, and Surprising Secrets of STDs

“What is charisma but the power of rhetoric in just a few words. Or even without words!”
― R. N. Prasher

“we are wounded by the words people speak, but we die from the ones that were”
― Shakieb Orgunwall

“Josh never said sorry, never said thank you, but he wrote to Ryan and Chelle every week with a conscientiousness and dedication he had never shown in anything else. The letters were bitter and funny and there were holes of unsaid where you could feel the demons breathing.”
― Frances Hardinge, Verdigris Deep

“So many people in the world feel they don’t have a voice to speak out on what they don’t like, or what’s troubling them. You do have a voice, the lord gave you. So, wash away the fear of not being heard that surrounds you. Don’t ever let someone else speak for you. Don’t put your thoughts in their hands, as they carry away your emotions down a path you don’t know. These are your thoughts and feeling, and they should be express calmly by you, relieving your mind of the unspoken burden you’ve lived with.”
― Ron Baratono

“The silence between words often speaks louder than the words themselves.”
― Shivanshu K. Srivastava

“Healing is elusive when love
Hides behind unsaid words—
Wounding more.”
― Jasmine Miró, Where Written Words Remain: Route to My Soul

“And when stillness
Finally meets
The unforgiving chaos,
Each breath of silence
Says so much more.”
― Jasmine Miró, Where Written Words Remain: Route to My Soul