Music, Art and Madness Quotations and Proverbs

* some views expressed in these quotations not neccesarily endorsed by the author of this file.
* for entertainment only - history is not an exact science - dates and quotes not guaranteed for accuracy.

Added for December 2007:

Strange how potent cheap music is.

The plumber can find nothing wrong with our piano; so I suppose that my wife does love me.
  • G. K. Chesterton, All Things Considered:
I have had more trouble with myself than with any other man I have ever met!
  • Dwight L. Moody (1837-1899)
I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.
  • Johannes Kepler (1571 ? 1630)
To see things in the seed, that is genius.
  • Lao Tse (c.600 B.C.)
I'm on a whisky diet. I've lost three days already!
  • Tommy Cooper
Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.
  • George Eliot (1819-1880) _The Spanish Gypsy_ [1868], Book III
I just hope we're a nice old couple living off the coast of Ireland or something like that--looking at our scrapbook of madness.
  • John Lennon (1940-1980) (Describing his plans of spending the golden years with Yoko Ono.)
I was never really wanted. The only reason I am a star is because of my repression. Nothing would have driven me through all that if I was "normal."
  • John Lennon (1940-1980) _The Beatles Anthology_ [2000]
I used to say to me auntie, "You throwing my f**kin' poetry out, and you'll regret it when I'm famous," and she threw the bastard stuff out. I never forgave her for not treating me like a f**kin' genius or whatever I was when I was a child.
  • John Lennon (1940-1980)
A poet begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
  • Robert Frost (1874 – 1963
Actors are targets. Millions of people see them on screen and fantasize. Some try to change their fantasies into reality.
  • Kirk Douglas (1916- ) _The Ragman's Son_ [1988], Chapter 37
Art is a conservative power, the strongest of all; it preserves spiritual possibilities that without it--perhaps--would die out.
  • Thomas Mann, Reflections of an Unpolitical Man
The age of an author is of no consequence; if they are any good, they were born old and wise.
  • Robertson Davies (1913-1995)
Bob Dylan is singing "The Times They Are A Changin'" in a television ad for healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente these days, and who could argue? With Led Zeppelin pitching Cadillacs, the Rolling Stones strutting in an Ameriquest Mortgage ad and Paul McCartney warbling for Fidelity Investments, it's clear that the old counterculture heroes of classic rock are now firmly entrenched as the house band of corporate America.
  • Geoff Boucher, L.A. Times Staff Writer _Los Angeles Times_ [October 5, 2005]
Everything you can imagine is real.
  • Pablo Ruiz y Picasso (1881-1973)
Inventing is a combination of brains and materials. The more brains you use, the less material you need.
  • Charles Franklin Kettering (1876-1958)
You can't shame or humiliate modern celebrities. What used to be called shame and humiliation is now called publicity.
  • P. J. O'Rourke, "Give War A Chance"
I had found years ago that the difference between madness and cruelty doesn't matter much to a victim.
  • Laurell K. Hamilton, _A Lick of Frost_
What the literary people in the ivory towers forget is that business is the key to everything - to the good life, to the arts, to civilization itself.
  • Nevil Shute (1899-1960) _Shute Shoots Back_ (Sept 1958) p. 11

 

 

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