"I often regret that I have spoken; never that I have been silent"
About this Quote
A clean aphorism with a sting: speech is framed not as self-expression but as self-exposure. Publilius Syrus isn’t praising shyness; he’s tallying risk. In public life, words are liabilities you can’t fully retract, and regret is the interest you pay on an impulsive sentence.
The line works because it flips a cultural assumption. We’re trained to treat silence as awkward, suspicious, even weak. Syrus makes it look like the only rational strategy in a world where people weaponize whatever you give them. “I often regret” is doing quiet heavy lifting: this isn’t moralizing from a mountaintop; it’s the exhausted wisdom of someone who’s watched a casual remark turn into a consequence. The second half, “never that I have been silent,” is deliberately absolute. It’s not literally true; it’s rhetorically useful. The extremity sells the lesson, like a parent saying “Don’t touch the stove” without footnotes.
Context matters. Syrus was a writer of sententiae in late Republican Rome, a culture where reputation, patronage, and political survival depended on performance - including verbal performance. A poet, especially one navigating status and power, would feel how quickly language can backfire: one joke too sharp, one opinion too frank, one boast too public. The subtext is tactical: speak only when the payoff outweighs the permanent record.
Read now, it lands as an antidote to the always-on compulsion to comment. Not because silence is purity, but because restraint is agency. In an economy of hot takes, Syrus offers the oldest luxury: control over what you don’t hand to the crowd.
The line works because it flips a cultural assumption. We’re trained to treat silence as awkward, suspicious, even weak. Syrus makes it look like the only rational strategy in a world where people weaponize whatever you give them. “I often regret” is doing quiet heavy lifting: this isn’t moralizing from a mountaintop; it’s the exhausted wisdom of someone who’s watched a casual remark turn into a consequence. The second half, “never that I have been silent,” is deliberately absolute. It’s not literally true; it’s rhetorically useful. The extremity sells the lesson, like a parent saying “Don’t touch the stove” without footnotes.
Context matters. Syrus was a writer of sententiae in late Republican Rome, a culture where reputation, patronage, and political survival depended on performance - including verbal performance. A poet, especially one navigating status and power, would feel how quickly language can backfire: one joke too sharp, one opinion too frank, one boast too public. The subtext is tactical: speak only when the payoff outweighs the permanent record.
Read now, it lands as an antidote to the always-on compulsion to comment. Not because silence is purity, but because restraint is agency. In an economy of hot takes, Syrus offers the oldest luxury: control over what you don’t hand to the crowd.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|
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