Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Jascha Heifetz

Music is for the betterment and enrichment of the individual, just as education and reading are. When people come together to play music as they do to play bridge, civilization will have taken its longest stride forward since the beginning of time. Music is something to live with always, and children should be taught to regard it as a close and inalienable friend.

Beginning | Children | Civilization | Education | Friend | Individual | Music | People | Play | Reading | Regard | Time | Will | Wisdom |

Hugh Reginald Haweis

Although music appeals simply to the emotions, and represents no definite images in itself, we are justified in using any language which may serve to convey to others our musical expressions. Words will often pave the way for the more subtle operations of music, and unlock the treasures which sound alone an rifle, and hence the eternal popularity of song.

Emotions | Eternal | Language | Music | Popularity | Sound | Will | Wisdom | Words |

Jamake Highwater

The Indian... sees his music as indistinct from his dancing and his dancing as indistinct from his worship and his worship as indistinct from his living.

Music | Wisdom | Worship |

Alphonso A. Hopkins

Poetry begotten of passion is ever debasing; poetry born of real heartfulness, always ennobles and uplifts.

Passion | Poetry | Wisdom |

Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

The silence in our lives is under assault on all fronts: roaring jets and blasting Walkmans, numbing elevator music and blaring headline news. It’s hard to genuflect to the beat of MTV. We are wired, plugged in, constantly catered to and cajoled. After a while we become terrified out of the silence, unaware of what it has to offer. We drown out the simple question of God with the simplistic sound-bites of man.

God | Man | Music | News | Question | Silence | Sound | Wisdom | God |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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 in our hearts.

Music | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Roger Imhoff

Where there is no concern in the heart, there comes no music from the soul.

Heart | Music | Soul | Wisdom |

Robinson Jeffers, fully John Robinson Jeffers

Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts... It is a beautiful work of nature, like an eagle or a high sunrise.

Nature | Poetry | Wisdom | Work |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of men's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his experience. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgment. The artist... faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an offensive state.

Arrogance | Art | Diversity | Experience | Individual | Judgment | Man | Men | Mind | Poetry | Power | Reality | Sensibility | Society | Vision | Wisdom | Society | Art | Truths |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Meditation is like a river. It cannot be tamed. It flows and flows and overflows its banks. It is music without sound. It is the silence in which the observer ceases to be immediately he plunges in.

Meditation | Music | Silence | Sound | Wisdom |

Jeannette Kirk

It can be said without qualification that music expresses all the various shadings of life's moods and the greatest portion of life's experiences. There is perhaps no more adequate tool than music to relate mankind to life.

Life | Life | Mankind | Music | Wisdom |

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

We love music for the buried hopes, the garnered memories, the tender feelings it can summon at a touch.

Feelings | Love | Music | Wisdom |

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Half the noblest passages in poetry are truisms; but these truism are the great truths of humanity; and he is the true poet who draws them from their fountains in elemental purity, and gives us a drink.

Humanity | Poetry | Purity | Truisms | Wisdom | Truths |