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 May 2008:

Don't compromise yourself. You're all you've got.

There is nobody as enslaved as the fanatic, the person in whom one impulse, one value, has assumed ascendancy over all others.
  • Milton R. Sapirstein
 All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.
  • William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)
 All things can corrupt perverted minds.
  • Ovid. (43 BC-17 AD) _Tristia_ (9 AD)
 What is art? It is not just nature, it is nurtured nature. It is intelligence applied to what physical ability you have.
  • Rudolph Hametovich Nureyev
 It may be that when the angels go about their task praising God, they play only Bach. I am sure, however, that when they are together en famille, they play Mozart.
  • Karl Barth (1886 - 1968)
Fact of the matter is, there is no hip world, there is no straight world. There's a world, you see, which has people in it who believe in a variety of different things. Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, use that something to support their own existence.
  • Frank Zappa (1940 - 1993)
 Concentration is the ability to think about absolutely nothing... When it is absolutely necessary.
  • Ray Knight
 No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve in quality as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing it is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it.
  • Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)
 Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner.
  • Lao-tzu (551-479 BC) _Tao Te Ching_ (translation by S. Mitchell 1995)
 Everyone is a weirdo freak. Except you, which makes you a weirdo freak.
  • the Ninja commenter in rachellucas.com/index.php/2008/05/06
 To understand is to perceive patterns.
  • Plato (427 ? 347 BC)
 I once asked Ben Britten what he thought was the most important requisite in composing opera. [...] the most important thing a composer must have is the ability to write many kinds of music--chorus alone, chorus with orchestra, soloists separately, soloists in ensemble, and so on. The needs are so varied that one must have terrific facility to handle them all.
  • Aaron Copland (1900 - 1990) _Copland Since 1943_
 I have decided senility is an adventure. I’m just going to learn to enjoy it. It’s a whole new day…every half-hour or so.
  • Janna, commenter on Rachel Lucas, _I need a personal assistant_
 In 1920, an obscure guy named Eisenhower took a military column from the East Coast to the West Coast to see how long it would take. It took 40 days … The same route you can do today in 18 hours with a GTO and enough Benzedrine.
  • Robert Silverberg
 I cannot love as I have loved, And yet I know not why; It is the one great woe of life, To feel all feeling die.
  • (Gamaliel) Philip James Bailey (1816 - 1902) _Festus_ [1839]
 I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, "The Beatles did."
  • (?)
 Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought.
  • E.Y. Harbug (1898 - 1981)

 

 

 

 

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