Not Saying Is A Flower

言わぬが花 (iwanu ga hana): not saying is the flower. Some things are better unsaid; said outright they lose their flavor and their grace. The proverb is about the beauty of the unsaid, and silence is golden, its English equation since 1904, is its prudent cousin about the safety of not speaking. It is a late Edo stage saying, first found as a pun the audience already knew in manuscripts of about 1800, and a younger cousin of a Heian proverb of unspoken love in the Tale of Genji: not saying surpasses saying. Tsubouchi Shōyō turned it on the art of the novel.