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Saturday, March 5, 2011

HAPPINESS IS NOT A MATTER OF INTENSITY

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We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.
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.
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If we strive to be happy by filling all the silences of life with sound, productive by turning all life's leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth.
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If we have no silence, God is not heard in our music.
 If we have no rest, God does not bless our work.
 If we twist our lives out of shape in order to fill every corner
 of them with action and experience, God will silently withdraw
 from our hearts and leave us empty.
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Thomas Merton
NO MAN IS AN ISLAND
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