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 February 2008:

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.
  • Henry van Dyke (1852 - 1933)
 To err is dysfunctional, to forgive co-dependent.
  • Berton Averre, lead guitarist for The Knack
 Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who dream only at night.
  • Edgar Allan Poe
 The worst part of success is to try finding someone who is happy for you.
  • Bette Midler
 Art is like God: it has a long white beard and helps you win ball games.
  • Mike Wittels, 1988
 To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.
  • Henri F. Amiel (1821 - 1881)
 Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can.
  • Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton (1803 - 1873)
 No great genius is without an admixture of madness.
  • Aristotle (384 - 322 BCE)
 Get yer haggis right here! Chopped heart and lungs, boiled in a wee sheep's stomach. Tastes as good as it sounds.
  • ~ dialouge, The Simpsons [Groundskeeper Willie]
 You can't have a lasting civilization without plenty of pleasant vices.
  • Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)
 The large drawing-room was filled with cigarette-smoke and screeching voices and raucous laughter and over- dressed bodies and (from the record player) the muffled blaring of a big band, very forties, very square. Funny how the vast majority of the human race has to generate a repulsive amount of noise before it can convince itself it's having a good time.
  • Susan Howatch _Mystical Paths_-p. 97
 I still believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you a perfect complexion.
  • Zelda Fitzgerald
 I met the Maharishi once, or at least I think I did. There were so many little men with gray beards and saffron robes roaming around the States in the name of Transcendental Meditation 40 years ago that it was difficult to tell them apart.
  • Tom Henshaw, "Recalling the Maharishi", The Scituate Mariner, Feb. 14, 2008
 The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.
  • Plutarch (46 - 120AD)
 I sleep as if injected with a powerful experimental muscle relaxant. My legs fall open in a grotesque come-hither manner; my knuckles brush the floor. Whatever is inside--tongue, uvula, moist bubbles of intestinal air--decides to leak out. From time to time, like one of those nodding-duck toys, my head tips forward to empty a quart or so of viscous drool onto my lap, then falls back to begin loading again with a noise like a toilet cistern filling. And I snore, hugely and helplessly, like a cartoon character, with rubbery flapping lips and prolonged steam-valve exhalations. For long periods I grow unnaturally still, in a way that inclines onlookers to exchange glances and lean forward in concern, then dramatically I stiffen and, after a tantalizing pause, begin to bounce and jostle in a series of whole-body spasms of the sort that bring to mind an electric chair when the switch is thrown. Then I shriek once or twice in a piercing and effeminate manner and wake up to find that all motion within five hundred feet has stopped and all children under eight are clutching their mother's hems. It is a terrible burden to bear.
  • Bill Bryson, _In A Sunburned Country_ 2000
 The Mind of man is less perturbed by a mystery it cannot explain than by an explanation it cannot understand.
  • David Mamet, The Water Engine

 

 

 

 

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