The cruelest lies are often told in silence.

Sometimes to be silent is to lie.

There are some men who lie even when telling the truth, for they tell it with their lips whilst they lie in their hearts.

Truth can remain silent. Lies must be spoken.

Maintaining silence about a dirty truth is another way of lying, a common practice in high places.

Sometimes, to remain silent is to lie, since silence can be interpreted as assent.

There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors, and looking them piteously in the eyes — die with despair of heart and convulsion of throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed.

Telling lies is a fault in a boy, an art in a lover, an accomplishment in a bachelor, and second-nature in a married man.

The tongue may be an unruly member — But silence poisons the soul.

Silence is the cruelest of cruelties.

If I tell some one that I love him – as I may have told a hundred others – my words will convey nothing to him; but the silence which will ensue, if I do indeed love him, will make clear in what depths lie the roots of my love, and will in its turn give birth to a conviction, that shall itself be silent; and in the course of a lifetime, this silence and this conviction will never again be the same. …

There comes a time when silence is betrayal.

Silence is what allows people to suffer without recourse, what allows hypocrisies and lies to grow and flourish, crimes to go unpunished.

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.