God’s poet is silence!  His song is unspoken,
And yet so profound, so loud, and so far,
It fills you, it thrills you with measures unbroken,
And as soft, and as fair, and as far as a star. 
—­Joaquin Miller.

Silence is the safest course for any man to adopt who distrusts himself.—­La ROCHEFOUCAULD.

If thou desire to be held wise, be so wise as to hold thy tongue.  —­Quarles.

As we must account for every idle word, so we must for every idle silence.—­Franklin.

Learn to hold thy tongue.  Five words cost Zacharias forty weeks’ silence.—­Fuller.

Silence is a virtue in those who are deficient in understanding.  —­BOUHOURS.

Silence, when nothing need be said, is the eloquence of discretion.  —­Bovee.

Silence does not always mark wisdom.—­S.T.  Coleridge.

Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise.—­Proverbs 17:28.

Sin.—­Suffer anything from man, rather than sin against God.—­Sir
Henry Vane.

Let him that sows the serpent’s teeth not hope to reap a joyous harvest.  Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, its own avenging angel,—­dark misgivings at the inmost heart.—­Schiller.

I could not live in peace if I put the shadow of a willful sin between myself and God.—­George Eliot.

Never let any man imagine that he can pursue a good end by evil means, without sinning against his own soul!  Any other issue is doubtful; the evil effect on himself is certain.—­Southey.

Many afflictions will not cloud and obstruct peace of mind so much as one sin:  therefore, if you would walk cheerfully, be most careful to walk holily.  All the winds about the earth make not an earthquake, but only that within.—­Archbishop Leighton.

Think not for wrongs like these unscourged to live;
Long may ye sin, and long may Heaven forgive;
But when ye least expect, in sorrow’s day,
Vengeance shall fall more heavy for delay. 

          
                          —­Churchill.

Sin is never at a stay; if we do not retreat from it, we shall advance in it; and the farther on we go, the more we have to come back.—­Barrow.

Other men’s sins are before our eyes, our own are behind our back.  —­Seneca.

Take steadily some one sin, which seems to stand out before thee, to root it out, by God’s grace, and every fibre of it.  Purpose strongly, by the grace and strength of God, wholly to sacrifice this sin or sinful inclination to the love of God, to spare it not, until thou leave of it none remaining, neither root nor branch.—­E.B.  Pusey.

Cast out thy Jonah—­every sleeping and secure sin that brings a tempest upon thy ship, vexation to thy spirit.—­Reynolds.