A Quote by Thomas Merton

Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm. — © Thomas Merton
Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm.
If sound is music and came from silence, then silence is potentially greater than sound. If the sound is effective, it should actually have a chemical - some sort of physiological - effect on the listener, so he doesn't have to hear that sound again.
Silence is Golden; it has divine power and immense energy. Try to pay more attention to the silence than to the sounds. Paying attention to outer silence creates inner silence: the mind becomes still. Every sound is born out of silence, dies back into silence, and during its life span is surrounded by silence. Silence enables the sound to be. It is an intrinsic but unmanifested part of every sound, every musical note, every song, and every word. The unmanifested is present in this world as silence. All you have to do is pay attention to it.
In silence one can receive more because all one's activities become concentrated at one point. There is only one real rhythm; in silence you hear it. When you live to the rhythm of this silence, you become it, slowly; everything you do, you do to it.
If music is sound & came from silence, then silence is potentially greater than sound.
Television is all about sound. You'll never get a moment of silence unless there's something really extraordinary going on, on screen, visually. They never let a moment of silence pass without being filled in television because it's a very sound-driven medium.
These two are the parts. The inner silence - the silence so deep that there is no vibration in your being. You are, but there are no waves. You are just a pool without waves, not a single wave arises. The whole being silent, still. Inside, at the center, silence, and on the periphery, celebration and laughter. And only silence can laugh, because only silence can understand the cosmic joke.
Silence must be comprehended as not solely the absence of sound. It is the natural environment for serenity and contemplation. Life without silence is life without privacy. The difference between sanity and madness is the quality of our thoughts. Silence is on the side of sanity.
Without silence there is no music. Not simply because the faculty of hearing deteriorates from constant exposure to noise, but because silence is both the majestic frame and the stable solution for musical (and poetic) ideas. Silence is the soda water, the bracing ether, the bridge and mode of respect for receiving instructions from the angel.
Not one sound fears the silence that extinguishes it. And no silence exists that is not pregnant with sound.
The happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burden in silence. Without this silence, happiness would be impossible.
There is a silence where hath been no sound, There is a silence where no sound may be,- In the cold grave, under the deep, deep sea, Or in the wide desert where no life is found.
Prayer within breath is silence, love within infinity is silence, Wisdom without word is silence, compassion without aim is silence, action without doer is silence, smiling with all existence is silence
I think I am probably in love with silence, that other world. And that I write, in some way, to negotiate seriously with it . Because there is, of course, always the desire, the hope, that they are not two separate worlds, sound and silence, but that they become each other, that only our hearing fails.
In the silence of a midwinter dusk, there is a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen. You are aware of the beating of your heart. The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.
In the beginning, there was silence. And out of the silence came the sound. The sound is not here.
Without the silence that follows the chants, you get only half the story. It's like the climax of a good story. The silence is there because it exists in the music. It just needs to be exposed and acknowledged.
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