An excerpt from Taqwa, a lecture by Imam Safi Khan:
One of the scholars said: Look at the great difference between people who are dead but their remembrance makes our hearts alive and between those people who are alive with you today but mixing with them makes your heart dead.
Ify Okoye 
I like that. A much classier version than something I heard years ago, to the effect that some people bring pleasure wherever they go, and some people bring it whenever they go. Thanks.
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You might find this of interest: http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1121/p01s04-ussc.html
I wonder to myself if the reason I sometimes withdraw from people is because I am shy and introverted or just because I want to protect my heart from the deadening effects of their company.
Thanks Bill for the article, the CS Monitor usually offers some of the best articles on Islam in the mainstream print media. If this fatwa council of women is to have any credibility it will need to be made up of women who are well-versed in the Islamic sciences, Quran, and Arabic.