I danced in the morning When the world was begun, And I danced in the moon And the stars and the sun, And I came down from heaven And I danced on the earth, At Bethlehem I had my birth. Dance, then, wherever you may be, I am the Lord of the Dance, said he, And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be, And I'll lead you all in the Dance, said he.
To modern science, these assumptions are as much out of date as the equally venerable errors, that the sun goes round the earth every four-and-twenty hours, or that water is an elementary body. The handful of soil is a factory thronged with swarms of busy workers; the rusty nail is an aggregation of millions of particles, moving with inconceivable velocity in a dance of infinite complexity yet perfect measure; harmonic with like performances throughout the solar system. If there is good ground for any conclusion, there is such for the belief that the substance of these particles has existed and will exist, that the energy which stirs them has persisted and will persist, without assignable limit, either in the past or the future. Surely, as Heracleitus said of his kitchen with its pots and pans, "Here also are the gods." Little as we have, even yet, learned of the material universe, that little makes for the belief that it is a system of unbroken order and perfect symmetry, of which the form incessantly changes, while the substance and the energy are imperishable.
When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something that lasts longer than we do.
Come to the bridal chamber, Death, Come to the mother's, when she feels, For the first time, her first born's breath; Come, when the blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke: Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm With banquet song and dance and wine; And thou art terrible: — the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, And all we know, or dream, or fear, Of agony, are thine. But to the hero, when his sword Has won the battle for the free, Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word, And in its hollow tones are heard The thanks of millions yet to be.
The honourablest part of talk is to give the occasion; and again to moderate and pass to somewhat else, for then a man leads the dance.
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
It is very sweet to note that a voice from heaven said to John, "Write." Does not that voice come to us? Are there not those who would taste the joys of heaven if we wrote them words of forgiveness and affection? Are there not others who would dry their tears if we would remind them of past joys, when we were poor as they are now? Nay, could not some, who read these plain words, place inside the envelope something bearing their signature which would make the widow's heart dance for joy?
With the meal there was karaoke. As the Chinese waiters brought the food, everyone at the restaurant sang “shanson,” the gravelly, syrupy gangster ballads that have become some of Russia’s favorite pop music. Shanson reflect the gangsters’ journeys to the center of Russian culture. These used to be underground, prison songs, full of gangster slang, tales of Siberian labor camps and missing your mother. Now every taxi driver and grocery plays them. “Vladimirsky Tsentral” is a wedding classic. Tipsy brides across the country in cream-puff wedding dresses and high, thin heels slow-dance with their drunker grooms: “The thaw is thinning underneath the bars of my cell / but the Spring of my life has passed so fast.” At the Chinese restaurant Miami Stas sang along too, but he seemed too meek, too obliging to be a gangster.
Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it.
You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.
Round and round, like a dance of snow In a dazzling drift, as its guardians, go Floating the women faded for ages, Sculptured in stone on the poet's pages.
Never give a sword to a man who can't dance.
"If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance."
Jack shall pipe and Jill shall dance.
Happiness, that grand mistress of ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route.
How inimitably graceful children are before they learn to dance!--_Coleridge._
Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music.
By the margin of fair Zurich's waters Dwelt a youth, whose fond heart, night and day, For the fairest of fair Zurich's daughters In a dream of love melted away.
Cease, Man, to mourn, to weep, to wail; enjoy thy shining hour of sun; We dance along Death's icy brink, but is the dance less full of fun?
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, / As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
T'his darkness will not last forever. There will some day come a Fifth of November — or another date, it doesn't matter — when fires will burn in a chain of brightness from Land's End to John O' Groats. The children will dance and leap about them as they did in the times before. They will take each other by the hand and watch the rockets breaking, and afterwards they will go home singing to the houses full of light…
Life isn't finding shelter in the storm. It's about learning to dance in the rain.
Music is an invisible dance, as dancing is a silent music.
I have brought you to the ring, now see if you can dance.
When you do dance, I wish you A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do Nothing but that.
Did you see that dress?” "I saw the dress.” "Did you like it?” He didn't answer. I took that as a yes. "Am I going to endanger my reputation if I wear it to the dance?” When he spoke, I could barely hear him. "You'll endanger the school.” I smiled and fell asleep.
To dance attendance on their lordships' pleasures.
~Actors.~--Players, sir! I look upon them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs. But, sir, you will allow that some players are better than others? Yes, sir; as some dogs dance better than others.--_Johnson._
To dance attendance on their lordships' pleasures.
The counsels of impatience and hatred can always be supported by the crudest and cheapest symbols; for the counsels of moderation, the reasons are often intricate, rather than emotional, and difficult to explain. And so the chauvinists of all times and places go their appointed way: plucking the easy fruits, reaping the little triumphs of the day at the expense of someone else tomorrow, deluging in noise and filth anyone who gets in their way, dancing their reckless dance on the prospects for human progress, drawing the shadow of a great doubt over the validity of democratic institutions. And until people learn to spot the fanning of mass emotions and the sowing of bitterness, suspicion, and intolerance as crimes in themselves — as perhaps the greatest disservice that can be done to the cause of popular government — this sort of thing will continue to occur.
Il ne sait sur quel pied danser=--He knows not on which foot to dance (_i.e._ he is at his wit's end).
My day is done, and I am like a boat drawn on the beach, listening to the dance-music of the tide in the evening.
Whoever has seen the masked at a ball dance amicably together, and take hold of hands without knowing each other, leaving the next moment to meet no more, can form an idea of the world.
This darkness will not last forever. There will some day come a Fifth of November — or another date, it doesn't matter — when fires will burn in a chain of brightness from Land's End to John O' Groats. The children will dance and leap about them as they did in the times before. They will take each other by the hand and watch the rockets breaking, and afterwards they will go home singing to the houses full of light...
The graceful minuet-dance of fancy must give place to the toilsome, thorny pilgrimage of understanding.= _Carlyle on the transition from the age of romance to that of science._
"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass; it's about learning to dance in the rain."
The magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul knows that I am part of the human race, my soul is an organic part of the great human soul, as my spirit is part of my nation. In my own very self, I am part of my family. There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters.
What is bigger than an elephant? But this also is become man's plaything, and a spectacle at public solemnities; and it learns to skip, dance, and kneel.
The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face.
Jack shall pipe and Gill shall dance.
Die Armen mussen tanzen wie die Reichen pfeifen=--The poor must dance as the rich pipe.
You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet, Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone? Of two such lessons, why forget The nobler and the manlier one? You have the letters Cadmus gave,-- Think ye he meant them for a slave?
If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
The brain is waking and with it the mind is returning. It is as if the Milky Way entered upon some cosmic dance. Swiftly the head mass becomes an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one; a shifting harmony of subpatterns. Now as the waking body rouses, subpatterns of this great harmony of activity stretch down into the unlit tracks of the stalk-piece of the scheme. Strings of flashing and travelling sparks engage the lengths of it. This means that the body is up and rises to meet its waking day.
No longer pipe, no longer dance.
She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars.
L'amour apprend aux anes a danser=--Love teaches even asses to dance.
The mob is a sort of bear; while your ring is through its nose, it will even dance under your cudgel; but should the ring slip and you lose your hold, the brute will turn and rend you.
Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.
At 5:00 a.m. the clubs get going properly; the Forbes stumble down from their loggias, grinning and swaying tipsily. They are all dressed the same, in expensive striped silk shirts tucked into designer jeans, all tanned and plump and glistening with money and self-satisfaction. They join the cattle on the dance floor. Everyone is wrecked by now and bounces around sweating, so fast it’s almost in slow motion. They exchange these sweet, simple glances of mutual recognition, as if the masks have come off and they’re all in on one big joke. And then you realize how equal the Forbes and the girls really are. They all clambered out of one Soviet world. The oil geyser has shot them to different financial universes, but they still understand each other perfectly. And their sweet, simple glances seem to say how amusing this whole masquerade is, that yesterday we were all living in communal flats and singing Soviet anthems and thinking Levis and powdered milk were the height of luxury, and now we’re surrounded by luxury cars and jets and sticky Prosecco. And though many westerners tell me they think Russians are obsessed with money, I think they’re wrong: the cash has come so fast, like glitter shaken in a snow globe, that it feels totally unreal, not something to hoard and save but to twirl and dance in like feathers in a pillow fight and cut like papier-mâché into different, quickly changing masks. At 5:00 a.m. the music goes faster and faster, and in the throbbing, snowing night the cattle become Forbeses and the Forbeses cattle, moving so fast now they can see the traces of themselves caught in the strobe across the dance floor. The guys and girls look at themselves and think: “Did that really happen to me? Is that me there? With all the Maybachs and rapes and gangsters and mass graves and penthouses and sparkly dresses?
The sound of music, makes me dance.
Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.
Was die Fursten geigen, mussen die Unterthanen tanzen=--Subjects must dance as princes fiddle to them.
In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.
These paper boats of mine are meant to dance on the ripples of hours, and not reach any destination.
Consciousness expresses itself through creation. This world we live in is the dance of the Creator. Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye but the dance lives on. On many an occasion when I am dancing, I have felt touched by something sacred. In those moments, I felt my spirit soar and become one with everything that exists. I become the stars and the moon. I become the lover and the beloved. I become the victor and the vanquished. I become the master and the slave. I become the singer and the song. I become the knower and the known. I keep on dancing and then, it is the eternal dance of creation. The Creator and the creation merge into one wholeness of joy. I keep on dancing — until there is only … the dance.
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance. 'T is not enough no harshness gives offence,-- The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
When music hits you, you dance.
Come to the bridal chamber, Death! Come to the mother's, when she feels For the first time her first-born's breath! Come when the blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke! Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean storm! Come when the heart beats high and warm, With banquet song, and dance, and wine! And thou art terrible!--the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, And all we know or dream or fear Of agony are thine.
But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell! Did ye not hear it?--No! 't was but the wind, Or the car rattling o'er the stony street. On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.
Midnight shout and revelry, Tipsy dance and jollity.
I never started to plow in my life That some one did not stop in the road And take me away to a dance or picnic. I ended up with forty acres; I ended up with a broken fiddle — And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories, And not a single regret.
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.
I could dance with you till the cows come home. On second thought, I'd rather
-- Groucho Marx
Down to the Banana Republics, Down to the tropical sun. Go the expatriated Americans, Hoping to find some fun. Some of them go for the sailing, Caught by the lure of the sea. Trying to find what is ailing, Living in the land of the free. Some of them are running from lovers, Leaving no forward address. Some of them are running tons of ganja, Some are running from the IRS. Late at night you will find them, In the cheap hotels and bars. Hustling the senoritas, While they dance beneath the stars. -- Jimmy Buffet, "Banana Republics"
There's a lesson that I need to remember When everything is falling apart In life, just like in loving There's such a thing as trying to hard You've gotta sing Like you don't need the money Love like you'll never get hurt You've gotta dance</p> Like nobody's watching It's gotta come from the heart If you want it to work. -- Kathy Mattea
They don't know how the world is shaped. And so they give it a shape, and try to make everything fit it. They separate the right from the left, the man from the woman, the plant from the animal, the sun from the moon. They only want to count to two. -- Emma Bull, "Bone Dance"
Festivity Level 1: Your guests are chatting amiably with each other, admiring your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing carols around the upright piano, sipping at their drinks and nibbling hors d'oeuvres. Festivity Level 2: Your guests are talking loudly -- sometimes to each other, and sometimes to nobody at all, rearranging your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing "I Gotta Be Me" around the upright piano, gulping their drinks and wolfing down hors d'oeuvres. Festivity Level 3: Your guests are arguing violently with inanimate objects, singing "I can't get no satisfaction," gulping down other peoples' drinks, wolfing down Christmas tree ornaments and placing hors d'oeuvres in the upright piano to see what happens when the little hammers strike. Festivity Level 4: Your guests, hors d'oeuvres smeared all over their naked bodies are performing a ritual dance around the burning Christmas tree. The piano is missing. You want to keep your party somewhere around level 3, unless you rent your home and own Firearms, in which case you can go to level 4. The best way to get to level 3 is egg-nog.
algorithm, n.: Trendy dance for hip programmers.
Educational television should be absolutely forbidden. It can only lead to unreasonable disappointment when your child discovers that the letters of the alphabet do not leap up out of books and dance around with royal-blue chickens. -- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
Life's too short to dance with ugly women.
Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain but there in the sandbox at nursery school. These are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt someone. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work some every day. Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup. The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup -- they all die. So do we. And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK. Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and sane living. Think of what a better world it would be if we all -- the whole world -- had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and cleaned up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world it is best to hold hands and stick together. -- Robert Fulghum, "All I ever really needed to know I learned in kindergarten"
If you are going to walk on thin ice, you may as well dance.
arachnoleptic fit, n.: The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
Drink and dance and laugh and lie Love, the reeling midnight through For tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do.) -- Dorothy Parker, "The Flaw in Paganism"