Wittgenstein and silence

Extracts from Paul Engelman, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein with a memoir, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967, p. 97

For Wittgenstein

... what goes beyond the clearly empirical cannot be spoken of (whereof one cannot speak thereof one much remain silent), but this does not mean that what is unsayable is insignificant, or worthless. 
For the positivists what we can speak of is all that matters in life.  Whereas for Wittgenstein all that really matters in life, is precisely what we must be silent about.  

When he nevertheless takes immense pains to delimit the unimportant, it is not the coastline of that island which he is bent on surveying with multicolour accuracy, but the boundary of the ocean.  

On p. 121...

Wittgenstein account lays great stress, not on the features of the world itself, but on how it is viewed. 
He really does seem to hold the view that there is something outside language and outside the facts of the world which is of fundamental spiritual significance.
However propositions can only handle the humdrum states of affairs.  They cannot express 'what is higher'.  Words will only hold facts, just as Wittgenstein says, 'a teacup will only hold a teacup full of water even if I were to pour out a gallon over it'.  Expressing anything higher will only end up talking nonsense, but it is important nonsense (p. 121).