“My son, I have never once regretted being silent. If speech is silver, then silence is gold.”

The Zuhd of Ahmad ibn Hanbal records this, in a report added by his son ‘Abdullah, as the counsel of Luqman to his son — the sage whose advice to his son is quoted in Surat Luqman. It comes through Sufyan as wisdom handed down, with no chain back to Luqman. Al-Jahiz already knew it as a proverb in the ninth century, and the form most people know today is its second half on its own.