I found this idea interesting, that suffering comes to lodge in us from the first time we hesitate to speak.  That said, I also believe that there are moments when holding back on speech can save us from ourselves, and so avoid later regret and suffering. 

A fine line we need to tread, between speaking out when needed and holding back when wise. 

‘What is the source of our first suffering?’ the French writer Gaston Bachelard asks and then answers, ‘It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak. It began in the moment when we accumulated silent things within us.’ 

Source: Seamus Heaney, Finders Keepers: Selected prose 1971-2001 (London: Faber and Faber, 2003), pp. 367-68

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