Listen With Others

I came across the sentence (not phrase) in Chambers, and it gave me the idea to have some blank entries.

It was convenient that it could be split into two equal halves. Also Chambers gives as the meaning (not the translation) as “silence gives consent” which gave me the title. I then put the two halves in the top and bottom rows and added some bars. I then asked Sympathy to fill the grid. I removed words I didn’t like or that were too difficult to clue and tried again. After doing this another couple of times I was reasonably satisfied, and went ahead writing clues, about which I can remember nothing. This was some time ago and now I can’t solve many of them.