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 June 2008:

I think it is the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

I may be arrested. I may be tried and thrown into jail, but I never will be silent.
  • Emma Goldman (1869-1940) _Mother Earth_ [July 1917]
 It's all in the mind.
  • George Harrison (dialouge, _Yellow Submarine_)
 We're monks. We're not pop stars, and we don't want to be pop stars!
  • Johannes Paul Chavanne (A monk at Heiligenkreuz Abbey, Austria; regarding all the attention paid to the abbey after an album of their chants made the pop charts in Europe) _The New York Times_ [June 26, 2008]
 While irony persuades us through our own mental exertions, satire tries by tricks of literary suggestion to convince us that its opponents are wicked and depraved.
  • Marie Collins Swabey PhD, (1890 - 1966) _Comic Laughter_ ch. 4. (1961)
 What we've got here is failure to communicate.
  • "Captain" (Strother Martin) (~dialouge, _Cool Hand Luke_ [1967]
 In the end we retain from our studies only that which we practically apply.
  • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
 I participated in the transformation of my era. I did it with clothes, which is surely less important than music, architecture, painting ... but whatever it's worth I did it.
  • Yves Saint Laurent (1936 - 2008) [2002]
 A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it.
  • Miles Davis
 There are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless.
  • Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) _The Prince_ [1513], Chapter 22
 I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.
  • Adolf Hitler
 Literature is news that stays news.
  • Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading, 1934, ch. 2.
 From a few writers who are above praise you pass at a single bound to a multitude who are beneath contempt.
  • The New York Times, July 10, 1887

 

 

 

 

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