This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Night steals on; and the day takes its farewell, like the words of a departing friend, or the last tone of hallowed music in a minister’s aisles, heard when it floats along the shade of elms; in the still place of graves." - Margaret Percival
"Every person in the world may not become a personage. But every person may become a personality. The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts. Interesting thoughts can live only in cultivated minds. Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good plays at the theater, good company, good conversation - what are they? They are the happiest people in the world; and they are not only happy in themselves, they are the cause of happiness in others." - William Lyon Phelps
"Geometry gives us the sense of equality produced by proportion. It also heals by means of fine music all that is harsh and inharmonious or discordant in the soul, under the influence of rhythm, meter and melody." - Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL
"It is in learning music that many youthful hearts learn to love." - Dominique Ricard
"Love is a mystery which, when solved, evaporates. The same holds for music." - Theodore Roethke
"Singing is the highest expression of music because it is the most direct expression of the emotions of the soul." - Clara Kathleen Rogers
"Music is the heartbeat of the universe. It reaches into the outer ramparts of eternity where time and space are nonexistent; it touches the stars and is reflected in the beauty of the galaxy. It is exemplified in the mathematical precision found in the largest star and the tiniest molecule. Music is emotional. It touches the heart and creates a response within the listener without his being aware of the technique." - John Rossel
"Today, thanks to technical progress, the radio and television, to which we devote so many of the leisure hours once spent listening to parlor chatter and parlor music, have succeeded in lifting the manufacture of banality out of the sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major industry." - Nathalie Sarraute, fully Nathalie Tcherniak Sarraute
"Architecture is music in space as it were a frozen music." - Friedrich Schelling, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von
"[The earth] is so small and so fragile and such a precious little spot in that universe that you can block it out with your thumb, and you realize that on that small spot, that little blue and white thing, is everything that means anything to you - all of history and music and poetry and art and death and birth and love." - Russell Schweikart, fully Russell Louis "Rusty" Schweickart aka Schweikart
"Our tradition teaches us that sound is God - Nada Brahma. The highest aim of our music is to reveal the essence of the universe it reflects." - Ravi Shankar, born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury, aka Pandit
"The pyramidal effect is essential to all the arts - the effect of starting from the level, rising to the supreme height, and sinking back to the original level again. This in truth is the meaning of key in music; in art, as in life, the secret of happiness is first of all to get as far away from home as you can, and then get back to your home: every work of art is a sort of Prodigal Son, that learns to appreciate the fixed point in space as in ethics, by straying from it." - Nahum Sokolow
"Music has always had its own syntax, its own vocabulary and symbolic means. Indeed, it is with mathematics the principal language of the mind when the mind is in a condition of non-verbal feeling." - George Steiner, fully Francis George Steiner
"Both music and painting add a spirit to devotion, and elevate the ardor." - Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne
"Music is, but its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all... music expresses itself." - Igor Feodorovitch Stravinsky, or Fyodorovich
"Music is given to us specifically to make order of things, to move from an anarchic, individualistic state to a regulated, perfectly conscious one, which alone insures vitality and durability." - Igor Feodorovitch Stravinsky, or Fyodorovich
"Music is the sole domain in which man realizes the present." - Igor Feodorovitch Stravinsky, or Fyodorovich
"The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music; they should be taught to love it instead." - Igor Feodorovitch Stravinsky, or Fyodorovich
"Music is indivisible. The dualism of feeling and thinking must be resolved to a state of unity in which one thinks with the heart and feels the brain." - George Szell, originally György Széll, György Endre Szél, or Georg Szell
"The costliest thing on earth is the drunkard’s song. It costs ruin of body. It costs ruin of mind...The costliest thing on earth is sin. The most expensive of all music is the Song of the Drunkards. It is the highest tariff of nations - not a protective tariff, but a tariff of doom, a tariff of woe, an tariff of death." - Thomas De Witt Talmage
"A good wife is heaven’s last, best gift to man - his gem of many virtues, his casket of jewels; her voice is sweet music, her smiles his brightest day, her kiss the guardian of his innocence, her arms the pale of his safety, her industry his surest wealth, her economy his safest steward, her lips his faithful counselors, her bosom the softest pillow of his care." - Jeremy Taylor
"It is not the eye, that sees the beauty of the heaven, nor the ear, that hears the sweetness of music or the glad tidings of a prosperous accident, but the soul, that perceives all the relishes of sensual and intellectual perfections; and the more noble and excellent the soul is, the greater and more savory are its perceptions." - Jeremy Taylor
"The architect must not only understand drawing, but music." - Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL
"Just as bad music is nothing else than organized emptiness of time, so materialistic thinking is nothing else than organized emptiness of spirit." - Franz Werfel, fully Franz Viktor Werfel
"In memory everything seems to happen to music." - Tennessee Williams, fully Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams
"In its purest form music is not a representational but rather a nonobjective, nonverbal world, it is a world of its own, almost a creatio ex hihilo, an occasion for immediacy of experience, a nonreducible mode of beauty, of contrast and resolution, of order and ecstasy flowing through and beyond the order. Order, and ecstasy rooted in order: that sounds like the relation between law and love, law and gospel." - James Luther Adams
"I must despise the world which does not know that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy." - Ludwig van Beethoven
"Music being the universal expression of the mysterious and supernatural, the best that man has ever attained to, is capable of uniting in common devotion minds that are only separated by creeds, and it comforts our hope with a brighter promise of unity than any logic offers." - Robert Bridges, fully Robert Seymour Bridges
"For boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson in your life--...the lesson of your utter insignificance. It is valuable to you, as well as to those you are to rub shoulders with. 'You are finite,' time tells you in a voice of boredom, 'and whatever you do is, from my point of view, futile.' As music to your ears, this, of course, may not count; yet the sense of futility, of limited significance even of your best, most ardent actions is better than the illusion of their consequence and the attendant self-satisfaction." - Joseph Brodsky
"For a man to argue, “I do not go to church; I pray alone,” is no wiser than if he should say, “I have no use for symphonies; I believe only in solo music.”" - George Arthur Buttrick
"For changing peoples’ manners and altering their customs there is nothing better than music." - Shu Ching or Shu Jing or Shujing NULL
"If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept alive through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature." - Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin
"Lowering consumption need not deprive people of goods and services that really matter. To the contrary, life’ most meaningful and pleasant activities are often paragons of environmental virtue. The preponderance of things that people name as their most rewarding pastimes are infinitely sustainable. Religious practice, conversation, family and community gatherings, theater, music, dance, literature, sports, poetry, artistic and creative pursuits, education, and appreciation of nature all fit readily into a culture of permanence – a way of life that can endure through countless generations." - Alan Thein Durning
"Every genuine strain of music is a serene prayer, or bold, inspired demand, to be united with all, at the Heart of things." - John Sullivan Dwight
"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." - Max Ehrmann
"The music of life is in danger of being lost in the music of the voice." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"Art is revelation. If painting shows only what is there, it is not art. Art like fine music or high literature must carry the beholder beyond this world and all that appears in it, transport him to the shores of the eternal world and enable him to see and hear the things not given to the tongue of man to utter." - James M. Gillis
"Are you leading an examined life? Or are you living in the hand-me-down ideas of others? Do you pick up the music coming from dimensions beyond the here and now? Or are you one of those who just don’t get it? Let your mind and your heart run deep. Come, join the seeker’s path on the long journey home." - Os Guiness
"Listen to your favorite music. I’m a big advocate of letting patients listen to music through headphones while they are asleep during surgery. It’s been reported they wake up more clearheaded and calm than other patients" - Allan J Hamilton
"The poet’s language is constructed not for the purpose of being understood but to be heard; it is an intermediary language between music and words, yet close to music than to words." - Ahmet Haşim
"You can’t change the music of your soul." - Katharine Hepburn, fully Katharine Houghton Hepburn
"The spirituality that flows from our actions is not fleeting, transient, or solitary in a silent cosmos. The music of refined actions, the melody of a noble soul, is woven into the tapestry of eternal music which God Himself composed." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Does music make plants grow, or are there among the plans some that are musical?" - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg