What is told into the ear of a man is often heard a hundred miles away.
—Chinese Proverb
The secret of a happy marriage remains a secret.
—Henny Youngman (1906–98) Anglo-American Comedian, Violinist
Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough. Not only have I found that when I talk to the little flower or to the little peanut they will give up their secrets, but I have found that when I silently commune with people they give up their secrets also—if you love them enough.
—George Washington Carver (1864–1943) American Scientist, Botanist, Educator, Inventor
Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Secrets travel fast in Paris.
—Napoleon I (1769–1821) Emperor of France
The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Secrecy is the chastity of friendship.
—Jeremy Taylor
What one hides is worth neither more nor less than what one finds. And what one hides from oneself is worth neither more nor less than what one allows others to find.
—Andre Breton (1896–1966) French Poet, Essayist, Critic
Secrets are things we give to others to keep for us.
—Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American Writer, Publisher, Artist, Philosopher
If you would keep your Secret from an enemy, tell it not to a friend.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
Men with secrets tend to be drawn to each other, not because they want to share what they know but because they need the company of the like-minded, the fellow afflicted.
—Don DeLillo (b.1936) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
To him that you tell your secret you resign your liberty.
—Anonymous
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself.
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer
It is wise to disclose what cannot be concealed.
—Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German Poet, Dramatist
No one ever keeps a secret so well as a child.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
You know there are no secrets in America. It’s quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
Thy secret is thy slave. If thou let it loose, thou becomest its slave.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible and hence we can hold the enemy’s fate in our hands.
—Sun Tzu (fl. c.544–496 BCE) Chinese General, Military Theorist
There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
That which man conceals in his innermost chamber is plain and manifest to God.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
He that has light within his own cleer brest
May sit ith center, and enjoy bright day,
But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts
Benighted walks under the mid-day Sun;
Himself is his own dungeon.
—John Milton (1608–74) English Poet, Civil Servant, Scholar, Debater
Do not reveal thy secret to the apes.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven’t changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don’t change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.
—Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British Novelist, Poet
Public lives are lived out on the job and in the marketplace, where certain rules, conventions, laws, and social customs keep most of us in line. Private lives are lived out in the presence of family, friends, and neighbors who must be considered and respected even though the rules and proscriptions are looser than what’s allowed in public. But in our secret lives, inside our own heads, almost anything goes.
—Robert Fulghum (b.1937) American Unitarian Universalist Author, Essayist, Clergyman
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that everyone of those darkly clustered houses encloses it’s own secret that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of it’s imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!
—Charles Dickens (1812–70) English Novelist
The secret thoughts of a man run over all things, holy, profane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame or blame.
—Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) English Political Philosopher
How can we expect another to keep our secret if we cannot keep it ourselves?
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613–80) French Writer
I am convinced digestion is the great secret of life.
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English Clergyman, Essayist, Wit