Great Throughts Treasury

"The virtue of such great poets as Shakespeare does not lie in the content of their poetry, but in its music." -

"Music and art and poetry attune the soul to God because they induce a kind of contact with the Creator and Ruler of the Universe." - Thomas Merton

"The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness. But it does not matter much because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there." - Thomas Merton

"A man can stand a lot as long as he can stand himself. He can live without hope, without friends, without books, even without music, as long as he can listen to his own thoughts." -

"What has for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but an inward music: the irresistible power of unarmed truth, the powerful attraction of its example." - Boris Pasternak, fully Boris Leonidovich Pasternak

"All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music, because, in its ideal, consummate moments, the end is not distinct from the means, the form from the matter, the subject from the expression." - Walter Pater, fully Walter Horatio Pater

"Sacred music, being a complementary part of the solemn liturgy, participates in the general scope of liturgy, which is the glory of God and the sanctification and edification of the faithful." - Pope Pius X, aka Saint Pope Pius X and Pope of the Eucharist, born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto NULL

"The voice of humility is God’s music and the silence of humility is God’s rhetoric." - Francis Quarles

"Is not music the food of love?" - Richard Brinsley Sheridan

"Among the first things created was the bird. Why? Because God wanted the world to have music at the start." - Thomas De Witt Talmage

"All about me may be silence and darkness, yet within me, in the spirit, is music and brightness, and color flashes through all my thoughts." - Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller

"Music is the shorthand of emotion." -

"To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable." - Aaron Copland

"A musical idea is not the same as a piece of music. It only induces a piece of music." - Aaron Copland

"The simplest way of listening to music is to listen for the sheer pleasure of the musical sound itself." - Aaron Copland

"If you want to understand music better, you can do nothing more important than to listen to it." - Aaron Copland

"The greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music." - Aaron Copland

"To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable." -

"A musical idea is not the same as a piece of music. It only induces a piece of music." -

"The simplest way of listening to music is to listen for the sheer pleasure of the musical sound itself." -

"If you want to understand music better, you can do nothing more important than to listen to it." -

"The greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music." -

"To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable." -

"A musical idea is not the same as a piece of music. It only induces a piece of music." -

"The simplest way of listening to music is to listen for the sheer pleasure of the musical sound itself." -

"If you want to understand music better, you can do nothing more important than to listen to it." -

"The greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music." -

"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself." - Abraham Harold Maslow

"Musicians must make music, artists must paint, poets must write if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What humans can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature." - Abraham Harold Maslow

"The truest expression of a people is in its dances and music." -

"The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie." -

"The truest expression of a people is in its dances and music." -

"The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie." -

"The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie." - Agnes George de Mille

"The truest expression of a people is in its dances and music." -

"The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie." -

"After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." -

"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." -

"After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." -

"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." -

"After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." -

"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." -

"Music has a power of forming the character, and should therefore be introduce din to the education of the young." - Aristotle NULL

"When men hear imitations, even apart from the rhythms and tunes themselves, their feelings move in sympathy. Since then music is a pleasure, and virtue consists in rejoicing and loving and hating aright, there is clearly nothing which we are so much concerned to acquire and to cultivate as the power of forming right judgments and of taking delight in good dispositions and noble actions. Rhythm and melody supply imitations of anger and gentleness, and also of courage and temperance, and of all the qualities contrary to these, and of the other qualities of character, which hardly fall short of the actual affections, as we know form our own experience, for in listening to such strains our souls undergo a change. The habit of feeling pleasure or pain at mere representation is not far removed from the same feeling about realities." - Aristotle NULL

"Music... stand quite alone. It is cut off from all the other arts... It does not express a particular and definite joy, sorrow, anguish, horror, delight, or mood of peace, but joy, sorrow, anguish, horror, delight, peace of mind themselves, in the abstract, in their essential nature, without accessories, and therefore without their customary motives. Yet it enables us to grasp and share them fully in this quintessence." - Arthur Schopenhauer

"It is easier to understand a nation by listening to its music than by learning its language." - Author Unknown NULL

"A person who wants to lead the orchestra must be willing to face the music." - Author Unknown NULL

"Take time to laugh, it is the music of the soul. Take time to think, it is the source of power. Take time to play, it is the source of perpetual youth. Take time to read, it is the fountain of wisdom. Take time to pray, it is the greatest power on earth. Take time to love and be loved, it is a God-given privilege. Take time to be friendly, it is the road to happiness. Take time to give, it is too short a day to be selfish. Take time to work, it is the price of success." - Author Unknown NULL

"Take time to laugh, it is the music of the soul." - Author Unknown NULL

"Mathematics... possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of a sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell