Women’s propensity to share confidences is universal. We confirm our reality by sharing.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1934–2002) American Journalist, Essayist, Memoirist, Travel Writer
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
Our true history is scarcely ever deciphered by others. The chief part of the drama is a monologue, or rather an intimate debate between God, our conscience, and ourselves. Tears, grieves, depressions, disappointments, irritations, good and evil thoughts, decisions, uncertainties, deliberations—all these belong to our secret, and are almost all incommunicable and intransmissible, even when we try to speak of them, and even when we write them down.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (1821–81) Swiss Moral Philosopher, Poet, Critic
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
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
Nothing weighs on us so heavily as a secret.
—Jean de La Fontaine (1621–95) French Poet, Short Story Writer
To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist
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
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
Keep shut the doors of thy mouth Even from the wife of thy bosom.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
I am convinced digestion is the great secret of life.
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English Clergyman, Essayist, Wit
To have found you is a dear happiness; and to be Apollo’s son is beyond all my hopes; but there is something I want to say to you alone. Come; this is a private matter between us two – anything you tell me shall be as secret as the grave.
—Euripides (480–406 BCE) Ancient Greek Dramatist
Secrecy is the first essential in affairs of the State.
—Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642) French Cardinal, Statemesan
Do not reveal thy secret to the apes.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
The secret of a happy marriage remains a secret.
—Henny Youngman (1906–98) Anglo-American Comedian, Violinist
There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself.
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer
His mind of man, a secret makes I meet him with a start he carries a circumference in which I have no part.
—Emily Dickinson (1830–86) American Poet
I know that’s a secret, for it’s whispered everywhere.
—William Congreve (1670–1729) English Playwright, Poet
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
The secret to humor is surprise.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
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
A secret is like a dove: when it leaves my hand it takes wing.
—Arabic Proverb
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
What is told into the ear of a man is often heard a hundred miles away.
—Chinese Proverb
Trust him not with your secrets, who, when left alone in your room, turns over your papers.
—Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) Swiss Theologian, Poet
Though thousands do thy friendship seek, To one alone thy secret speak.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
When a secret is revealed, it is the fault of the man who has entrusted it.
—Jean de La Bruyere (1645–96) French Satiric Moralist, Author
Three can keep a secret if two are dead.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
The holiest of all holidays are those kept by ourselves in silence and apart, the secret anniversaries of the heart, when the full tide of feeling overflows.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
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