As with many proverbs, the origin of this phrase is obscured by the mists of time. There are reports of versions of it dating back to Ancient Egypt. The first example of it in English is from the poet Thomas Carlyle, who translated the phrase from German in Sartor Resartus, 1831, in which a character expounds at length on the virtues of silence:
“Silence is the element
in which great things fashion themselves together; that at
length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the
daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule. Not
William the Silent only, but all the considerable men I have
known, and the most undiplomatic and unstrategic of these,
forbore to babble of what they were creating and projecting.
Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do thou thyself but hold
thy tongue for one day: on the morrow, how much clearer
are thy purposes and duties; what wreck and rubbish have
those mute workmen within thee swept away, when intrusive
noises were shut out! Speech is too often not, as the Frenchman
defined it, the art of concealing Thought; but of quite
stifling and suspending Thought, so that there is none to
conceal. Speech too is great, but not the greatest. As
the Swiss Inscription says: Sprecfien ist silbern, Schweigen
ist golden (Speech is silvern, Silence is golden); or as I
might rather express it: Speech is of Time, Silence is of
Eternity.”
That fuller version – ‘speech is silver; silence is golden’, is still sometimes used, although the shorter form is now more common.
The same thought is expressed in a 16th century proverb, now defunct – as many present-day feminists would prefer it:
“Silence is a woman’s best garment.”
Silence has in fact long been considered laudable in religious circles. The 14th century author Richard Rolle of Hampole, in
The psalter; or psalms of David, 1340:
“Disciplyne of silence is goed.”
Wyclif’s Bible, 1382 also includes the thought – “Silence is maad in heuen”. [made in Heaven]