Quotes
Quotes about Art
Neil: The meek may inherit the earth, but they don't get in to Harvard.
Now I know I've got a heart, because it's breaking.
It struck me that the movies had spent more than half a century saying, "They lived happily ever after" and the following quarter-century warning that they'll be lucky to make it through the weekend. Possibly now we are now entering a third era in which the movies will be sounding a note of cautious optimism: You know it just might work.
It grossed something like 12 million dollars and started a cycle of so-called boy-meets-ghoul horror films.
Nor is there any law more just, than that he who has plotted death shall perish by his own plot. [Lat., Neque enim lex est aequior ulla, Quam necis artifices arte perire sua.]
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, That I am meek and gentle with these butchers! Thou art the ruins of the noblest man That ever lived in the tide of times. Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
One to destroy is murder by the law, And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe; To murder thousands takes a specious name, War's glorious art, and gives immortal fame.
There's music in the sighing of a reed; There's music in the gushing of a rill; There's music in all things, if men had ears: Their earth is but an echo of the spheres.
Music is the art of thinking with sounds.
The choirs left the main tune and soared two octaves past heaven in a descant to rattle the bones and surge the heart.
I remember being handed a score composed by Mozart at the age of eleven. What could I say? I felt like de Kooning, who was asked to comment on a certain abstract painting, and answered in the negative. He was then told it was the work of a celebrated monkey. 'That's different. For a monkey, it's terrific.'
The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another . . . and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.
All the sounds of the earth are like music.
As the longfingered sun reaches out to touch a cloistered trillium or a lake trembles in the light of moon and stars so can a poet's long rainbow of words play our heartstrings from afar.
Music must rank as the highest of the artsâmore than any other, it ministers to human welfare.
Mozart is sweet sunshine.
I have my own particular sorrows, loves, delights; and you have yours. But sorrow, gladness, yearning, hope, love, belong to all of us, in all times and in all places. Music is the only means whereby we feel these emotions in their universality.
I listened, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more.
There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.
Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory.
I've outdone anyone you can nameâMozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500.
Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another . . . and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.
The workings of the human heart are the profoundest mystery of the universe. One moment they make us despair of our kind, and the next we see in them the reflection of the divine image.
