The story
The saying first appears in English in the 1830s, in Thomas Carlyle’s strange, brilliant book Sartor Resartus. Carlyle was a Scottish writer who loved German thought.
In the book, his German professor quotes what he calls a Swiss inscription: “Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden.” Carlyle translates it as “Speech is silvern, Silence is golden.” No one has ever found the inscription, and scholars doubt it was real.
The idea is far older than Carlyle. In the 800s, the Arab writer al-Jahiz wrote that if speech were of silver, then silence would be of gold. An old Aramaic saying put it in coins: if a word is worth one shekel, silence is worth two.
The proverb became popular in Germany in the early 1800s. One scholar, Richard Jente, suggested it may also have reached English speakers through German immigrants in the United States. Either way, Carlyle put it in English print, and over time English speakers kept the gold and quietly dropped the silver.
