Speech, says Maeterlink, is never the medium of communication of real and inmost thoughts. Silence alone can transmit them from soul to soul. We talk to fill up the blanks in life. Silence is so truth-telling, so illuminative, that few have the courage to face it. Mankind fears silence more than the dark. The most illuminating silence of all, the most irresistible, is the silence of death. It is the unspoken word that reveals our inner self.

“We do not know each other; we have not yet dared to be silent together.”

From Iconoclasts by James Gibbons Huneker