the like of him

“1845-1847 - Quoil’s Deserted House”:

He was here, the likes of him, for a season, standing light in his shoes like a faded gentleman, with gesture almost learned in drawing-rooms; wore clothes, hat, shoes, cut ditches, felled wood, did farm work for various people, kindled fires, worked enough, ate enough, drank too much. He was one of those unnamed, countless sects of philosophers who founded no school.

"The Writings of Henry David Thoreau (Houghton Mifflin & Co.,1906). Journal VIII edited by Bradford Torrey [The small and much mutilated journal which begins here appears to belong to the Walden period (1845-1847), but the entries are undated.]

begins and ends in silence

Much of a monk's life is spent in silence. Much of poet's life is spent in silence, too—a poet spends a fraction of his time actually writing poems. [Thomas] Merton was both a monk and a poet, and thus well-acquainted with silence. Like meditation, and like prayer, poetry is surrounded by silence. Poetry begins and ends in silence. Silence is also inherent within the poem, like the silences between notes in music.

Frederick Smock, “Merton and Silence,” The Merton Journal, 2008, volume 15 number 1

musical thought

A musical thought is one spoken by a mind that has penetrated into the inmost heart of the thing; detected the inmost mystery of it, namely the melody that lies hidden in it; the inward harmony of coherence which is its soul, whereby it exists, and has a right to be, here in this world.

—Thomas Carlyle, “The Hero as Poet”