كثيرًا ما تُقال أقسى الأكاذيب في صمت. قد يجلس المرء في غرفةٍ ساعاتٍ طويلة دون أن ينبس ببنتِ شفة، ثم يخرج منها صديقًا غادرًا أو مُفترِيًا حقيرًا. وكم من حبٍّ ماتَ لأنّ العاشق، عند اللحظة الحاسمة من العلاقة، بسبب الكبرياء أو الحقد أو التردّد، أو ذلك الخجل غير الرجولي الذي يمنع المرء من أن يجرؤ على البوح بمشاعره، اكتفى بأن يُطأطئ رأسه ويلزم الصمت!

“The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue?”Robert Louis Stevenson — The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays (Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer, containing Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, Catriona and A Child's Garden of Verses (2015)