This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
At the root of all power and motion, there is music and rhythm, the play of patterned frequencies against the matrix of time. We know that every particle in the physical universe takes its characteristics from the pitch and pattern and overtones of itsparticular frequencies,its singing. Before we make music, music makes us.
The longer I live the more my mind dwells upon the beauty and wonder of the world… I have loved the feel of the grass under my feet, and the sound of the running streams by my side. The hum of the wind in the treetops has always been good music to me, and the face of the fields has often comforted me more than the faces of men. I am in love with this world...I have tilled its soil, I have gathered its harvest, I have waited upon its seasons, and always have I reaped what I have sown. I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed its waters, crossed its deserts, felt the sting of its frosts, the oppression of its heats, the drench of its rains, the fury of its winds, and always have beauty and joy waited upon my goings and comings.
Beauty | Fury | Good | Joy | Love | Mind | Music | Oppression | Sound | Wonder | Beauty |
Character is the product of daily, hourly actions, and words and thoughts; daily forgivenesses, unselfishness, kindnesses, sympathies, charities, sacrifices for the good of others, struggles against temptation, submissiveness under trial. Oh, it is these, like the blending colors in a picture or the blending notes of music which constitute the man.
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
The principles of music and wood carving are alike -- when a wood carving is finished, it has been created at the expense of all the wood that has been carved away. Only the music of nature is complete and undiminished.
Music | Nature | Principles |
Life without music is unthinkable. Music without life is academic. That is why my contact with music is a total embrace.
Noble thoughts not followed by action are like good music which is never played.
Hector Berlioz, fully Louis-Hector Berlioz
Love cannot express the idea of music, while music may give an idea of love.
Music |
Louis-Ferdinand Céline, pen name Louis-Ferdinand Destouches
The worst part is wondering how you’ll find the strength tomorrow to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much too long, where you’ll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it’s treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn’t enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I’ve never been able to kill myself.
Age | Death | Destiny | Dread | Earth | Ends | Enough | Kill | Life | Life | Madness | Man | Music | Old age | Silence | Strength | Time | Tomorrow | Truth | Will | Youth | Youth | Old |
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morely of Blackburn, Lord Morley
The finger of the atheists' own divinity, Reason, wrote on the wall the appalling judgments that there is no God; that the universe is only matter in spontaneous motion; and, most grievous word of all, that what men call their souls die with the death of the body, as music dies when the strings are broken.
Dancing is surely the most basic and relevant of all forms of expression. Nothing else can so effectively give outward form to an inner experience. Poetry and music exist in time. Painting and architecture are a part of space. But only the dance lives at once in both space and time. In it the creator and the thing created, the artist and the expression, are one. Each participates completely in the other. There could be no better metaphor for an understanding of the mechanics of the cosmos.
Marcel Marceau, born Marcel Mangel
Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
Failure will hurt but not hinder us. Disillusion will pain but not dishearten us. Sorrows will shake us but not break us. Hope will set the music ringing and quicken our lagging pace. We need hope for living far more than for dying. Dying is easy work compared with living. Dying is a moment's transition; living, a transaction of years. It is the length of the rope that puts the sag in it. Hope tightens the cords and tunes up the heart-strings. Work well, then; suffer patiently, rejoicing in hope. God knows all, and yet is the God of Hope. And when we have hoped to the end here, He will give us something to look forward to, for all eternity. For "hope abideth."
Mary Webb, born Gladys Mary Meredith
Nature's music is never over; her silences are pauses, not conclusions.
Music |
Mary Kay Ash, fully Mary Kathlyn Wagner Ash
Most people live and die with their music still unplayed. They never dare to try.
Ere you lie down to sleep in the night, sit still awhile, and nurse again to life your gentler self. Forget the restless, noisy spirit of the day, and encourage to speech the soft voices within you that timidly whisper of the peace of the quiet night; and occasionally look out at the quiet stars. The night will soothe you like a tender mother, folding you against her soft bosom, and hiding you from the harm of the world. Though denied and rejected by men in the light of day, the night will not reject you and in the still of her soft shadows you are free. After the day's struggle there is no freedom like unfettered thoughts, no sound like the music of silence. And though behind you lies a road of dust and heat and discouragement, and before you the challenge and uncertainty of untried paths, in this brief hour you are master of all highways, and the universe nestles in your soul.
Challenge | Freedom | Harm | Life | Life | Light | Men | Music | Peace | Quiet | Sound | Speech | Spirit | Struggle | Uncertainty | Universe | Will |