Quotes
Quotes about Music
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
The Fisherman Piping A fisherman skilled in music took his flute and his nets to the seashore. Standing on a projecting rock, he played several tunes in the hope that the fish, attracted by his melody, would of their own accord dance into his net, which he had placed below. At last, having long waited in vain, he laid aside his flute, and casting his net into the sea, made an excellent haul of fish. When he saw them leaping about in the net upon the rock he said: O you most perverse creatures, when I piped you would not dance, but now that I have ceased you do so merrily.
Music is love in search of a word.
Nothing is poorer than a truth expressed as it was thought. Committed to writing in such cases, it is not even a bad photograph. Truth wants to be startled abruptly, at one stroke, from her self-immersion, whether by uproar, music or cries for help.
The intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge.
Applause that comes thundering with such force you might think the audience merely suffers the music as an excuse for its ovations.
Architecture is frozen music. [Ger., Die Backunst ist eine erstarrte Musik.]
I've now got the music book ready, Do sit up and sing like a lady A recitative from Tancredi, And something from "Palpiti!" Sing forte when first you begin it, Piano the very next minute, They'll cry "What expression there's in it!" Don't sing English ballads to me!
The light of love, the purity of grace, The mind, the Music breathing from her face, The heart whose softness harmonized the whole, And, oh! the eye was in itself a Soul!
How soft the music of those village bells, Falling at interval upon the ear In cadence sweet; now dying all away, Now pealing loud again, and louder still, Clear and sonorous, as the gale comes on! With easy force it opens all the cells Where Memory slept.
Those evening bells! those evening bells! How many a tale their music tells!
Hear the sledges with the bells, Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night, While the stars that oversprinkle All the Heavens seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight: Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells-- From the jingling and the tingling of the bells.
And the Sabbath bell, That over wood and wild and mountain dell Wanders so far, chasing all thoughts unholy With sounds most musical, most melancholy.
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, That sucked the honey of his music vows, Now see that noble and most sovereign reason Like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh, That unmatched form and feature of blown youth Blasted with ecstasy.
Hark, how chimes the passing bell! There's no music to a knell; All the other sounds we hear, Flatter, and but cheat our ear. This doth put us still in mind That our flesh must be resigned, And, a general silence made, The world be muffled in a shade. [Orpheus' lute, as poets tell, Was but moral of this bell, And the captive soul was she, Which they called Eurydice, Rescued by our holy groan, A loud echo to this tone.]
Hear how the birds, on ev'ry blooming spray, With joyous musick wake the dawning day.
I heard a bird so sing, Whose music, to my thinking, pleased the king.
Music is not written in red, white and blue. It is written in the heart's blood of the composer.
The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture; it's a really stupid thing to want to do.
Song of the brave, how thrills thy tone As when the Organ's music rolls; No gold rewards, but song alone, The deeds of great and noble souls. [Ger., Hoch klingt das Lied vom braven Mann, Wie Orgelton und Glockenklang; Wer hohes Muths sich ruhmen kann Den lohnt nicht Gold, den lohnt Gesang.]
Gently running made sweet music with the enameled stones and seemed to give a gentle kiss to every sedge he overtook in his watery pilgrimage.
The music of the brook silenced all conversation.
The more thou dam'st it up, the more it burns. The current that with gentle murmur glides, Thou know'st, being stopped, impatiently doth rage; But when his fair course is not hindered, He makes sweet music with th' enameled stones, Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge, He overtaketh in his pilgrimage. And so by many winding nooks he strays With willing sport to the wild ocean. Then let me go and hinder not my course. I'll be as patient as a gentle stream And make a pastime of each weary step, Till the last step have brought me to my love; And there I'll rest, as after much turmoil A blessed soul doth in Elysium.
Karma has written on George Bush's face. It has sculpted trixoypurine uric acid lines in his brow like music scales with no notes It has painted his face the red of cholesterol blockage It has constricted his right eye.. Time has sculpted Dick Cheney's face. His lip curls with contempt for others. His eyes evade the searchlight of truth. We pray that God give them and all beings mercy.. as God now removes them from an office through which they harm hundreds of millions of other beings.
