“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.”
Source: No Man Is an Island
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Thomas Merton 92
Priest and author 1915–1968Related quotes
Vol. II, p. 30
1980s, Letters to the Schools (1981, 1985)
Context: Attention involves seeing and hearing. We hear not only with our ears but also we are sensitive to the tones, the voice, to the implication of words, to hear without interference, to capture instantly the depth of a sound. Sound plays an extraordinary part in our lives: the sound of thunder, a flute playing in the distance, the unheard sound of the universe; the sound of silence, the sound of one’s own heart beating; the sound of a bird and the noise of a man walking on the pavement; the waterfall. The universe is filled with sound. This sound has its own silence; all living things are involved in this sound of silence. To be attentive is to hear this silence and move with it.
Source: Midnight's Children
“The Vinyl Solution.” in Musician, Player, and Listener 24 (April-May 1980): 34.
Elsewhere
“In every sound sleeps the silence.”
“Scream,” p. 34
The Creator (2000), Sequence: “Forest of the Universe”
“Silence is not the absence of sound, but the absence of self.”
Emptiness
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
Sonnet, Silence; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
20th century
“In an endless silence even screams sound silent.”
“Scream,” p. 34
The Creator (2000), Sequence: “Forest of the Universe”