Letter 93

Isidore of PelusiumUnknown|isidore pelusium
From: Isidore of Pelusium, monk
To: An unnamed person
Date: ~410 AD
Context: Isidore on the power of silence and the weakness of empty speech.

Silence, rightly practiced, is not the absence of speech but the fullness of restraint. The person who speaks only when necessary and holds back everything superfluous has mastered one of the hardest virtues. For the tongue runs ahead of the mind by nature — it takes discipline to hold the two together. Those who have attained this virtue teach more by their quiet than others teach by their eloquence.

Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.