Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.

The remark is a dry, moral-psychological observation about talkativeness and self-display. Eliot praises the rare discipline of silence: if one has no real thought, insight, or useful contribution, the virtuous (and socially considerate) act is to refrain rather than fill the air with empty verbiage. The humor turns on the phrase “wordy evidence,” implying that people often prove they have nothing to say precisely by saying too much. In Eliot’s broader ethical vision, speech is a form of responsibility—language should serve truth, sympathy, and clarity, not vanity or noise. The line also functions as social satire, skewering conversational pretension and the human tendency to mistake fluency for substance.