The earth has music for those who listen.
I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
I must study politics and war, that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain. [Letter to his wife Abigail; edited by Charles Francis Adams. May 12, 1780.]
Our senses can perceive no extreme. Too much noise deafens us, excess of light blinds us, too great distance or nearness equally interfere with our vision, prolixity or brevity equally obscure a discourse, too much truth overwhelms us. I know even those who cannot understand that if four be taken from nothing nothing remains. First principles are too plain for us, superfluous pleasure troubles us. Too many concords are unpleasing in music, and too many benefits annoy, we wish to have wherewithal to overpay our debt. _Beneficia eo usque læta sunt dum videntur exsolvi posse; ubi multum antevenere, pro gratia odium redditur._
The sweetest music is not in the oratorio, but in the human voice when it speaks from its instant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage.
Comus and his midnight crew.
It seems to me that the coming of love is like the coming of spring--the date is not to be reckoned by the calendar. It may be slow and gradual; it may be quick and sudden. But in the morning, when we wake and recognize a change in the world without, verdure on the trees, blossoms on the sward, warmth in the sunshine, music in the air, we say spring has come.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
He makes sweet music with th' enamell'd stones, Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge He overtaketh in his pilgrimage.
Therefore the instrument has never been marred; on the contrary, we are trying to get music out of harps, sacbuts, and psalteries, which never were in tune and seemingly never will be.
Soft is the music that would charm forever; The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly.
What is our pen doing? Is it adding joy to other men's lives? If so, then angels may tune their harps when we sit at our desk. They are sent to minister to the heirs of salvation, and would be glad to look upon our pen as writing music for them to sing, because what we write makes their client's joy to be full.--_Thomas Champness._
Makes a swan-like end, Fading in music.
How many there are that take pleasure in toil: that can outrise the sun, outwatch the moon, and outrun the field's wild beasts! merely out of fancy and delectation, they can find out mirth in vociferation, music in the barking of dogs, and be content to be led about the earth, over hedges and through sloughs, by the windings and the shifts of poor affrighted vermin; yet, after all, come off, as Messalina, tired, and not satisfied with all that the brutes can do. But were a man enjoined to this that did not like it, how tedious and how punishable to him would it prove! since, in itself, it differs not from riding post.--_Feltham._
Jarring interests of themselves create the according music of a well-mixed state.--_Pope._
Our poets are men of talents who sing, and not the children of music.
I think most readers of Shakespeare sometimes find themselves thrown into exalted mental conditions like those produced by music.--_O. W. Holmes._
Never is the deep, strong voice of man, or the low, sweet voice of woman, finer than in the earnest but mellow tones of familiar speech, richer than the richest music, which are a delight while they are heard, which linger still upon the ear in softened echoes, and which, when they have ceased, come, long after, back to memory, like the murmurs of a distant hymn.--_Henry Giles._
Emotion, not thought, is the sphere of music; and emotion quite as often precedes as follows thought.
When Music, heavenly maid, was young, While yet in early Greece she sung.
He murmurs near the running brooks A music sweeter than their own.
The sphere-harmony of a Shakespeare, of a Goethe, the cathedral music of a Milton, the humble, genuine lark-notes of a Burns.
What a poor appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colours which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose.
Spiritual music can only spring from discords set in unison; but for evil there were no good, as victory is only possible by battle.
Many an irksome noise, when a long way off, is heard as music.
Whoso hath skill in this art= (music) =is of a good temperament, fitted for all things.
Without music there can be no perfect knowledge, for there is nothing without it. For even the universe itself is said to have been put together with a certain harmony of sounds, and the very heavens revolve under the guidance of harmony.
There 's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away.
Before I leave, the Eurotrash girl tells me she likes my gazelleskin wallet. I tell her I would like to tit-fuck her and then maybe cut her arms off, but the music, George Michael singing “Faith,” is too loud and she can’t hear me. Back upstairs I find Patricia where I left her,
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! / Here will we sit and let the sounds of music / Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night / Become the touches of sweet harmony.
The most elevated sensation of music arises from a confused perception of ideal or visionary beauty and rapture, which is sufficiently perceivable to fire the imagination, but not clear enough to become an object of knowledge.
People haven't always been there for me but music always has.
Sundays observe; think when the bells do chime, 'T is angels' music.
The most worthy thing is that which satisfies the most worthy sense; therefore painting, which satisfies the sense of sight, is more worthy than {86} music, which merely satisfies the hearing. The most worthy thing is that which endures longest; therefore music, which is continually dying as soon as it is born, is less worthy than painting, which lasts eternally with the colours of enamel. The most excellent thing is that which is the most universal and contains the greatest variety of things; therefore painting must be set above all other arts, because it contains all the forms which exist and also those which are not in nature, and it should be glorified and exalted more than music, which deals with the voice only.
When words leave off, music begins.
Like an Aeolian harp that wakes No certain air, but overtakes Far thought with music that it makes: Such seem'd the whisper at my side: "What is it thou knowest, sweet voice?" I cried. "A hidden hope," the voice replied: So heavenly-toned, that in that hour From out my sullen heart a power Broke, like the rainbow from the shower, To feel, altho' no tongue can prove That every cloud, that spreads above And veileth love, itself is love.
Ah, music," he said, wiping his eyes. "A magic beyond all we do here!
With it images are made to the gods; around it divine worship is conducted, of which music is a subservient ornament; by means of it pictures are given to lovers of their beloved; by it the beauties are preserved which time, and nature the mother, render fitful; by it we retain the images of famous men. And if thou wert to say that by committing music to writing you render it eternal, we do the same with letters.
Soft is the music that would charm for ever; / The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly.
The noblest charms of music, though real and affecting, seem too confused and fluid to be collected into a distinct idea. Harmony is always understood by the crowd, and almost always mistaken by musicians.
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.
A poor man resembles a fiddler, whose music, though liked, is not much praised, because he lives by it; while a gentleman performer, though the most wretched scraper alive, throws the audience into raptures.--_Goldsmith._
I think the unique thing about music and graphic art is as opposed to, say, acting and directing, that if you are good you can always create a place for yourself.
List his discourse of war, and you shall hear / A fearful battle render'd you in music; / Turn him to any cause of policy, / The Gordian Knot of it he will unloose, / Familiar as his garter.
I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
If conversation was the lyrics, laughter was the music, making time spent together a melody that could be replayed over and over without getting stale.
Words are but poor interpreters in the realms of emotion. When all words end, music begins; when they suggest, it realises; and hence the secret of its strange, ineffable power.
The string o'erstretched breaks, and the music flies; / The string o'erslack is dumb, and music dies; / Tune us the sitar neither low nor high.
Unless music exalt and purify, virtually it is not music at all.
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.
I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
The only escape from the miseries of life are music and cats...
When music hits you, you dance.
I'd like just to be remembered as a guy that came along and did his music, did his best and showed up on time, clean and ready to do the job, wrote a few songs, and had a hell of a time.
Stretch or contract me, Thy poor debtor; This is but tuning of my breast, To make the music better. Whether I fly with angels, fall with dust, Thy hands made both, and I am there; Thy power and love, my love and trust Make one place ev'rywhere.
Asinus ad lyram=--An ass at the lyre, _i.e._, one unsusceptible of music.
Without music, life would be a mistake. Friedrich Nietzsche
This will prove a brave kingdom to me, where I shall have my music for nothing.
Find mankind where thou wilt, thou findest it in living movement, in progress faster or slower; the ph?nix soars aloft, hovers with outstretched wings, filling earth with her music; or, as now, she sinks, and with spheral swan-song immolates herself in flame, that she may soar the higher and sing the clearer.
~Music.~--Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony, but organically I am incapable of a tune.--_Lamb._
Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, / And makes as healthful music.
The moral sense is a very complex affair--dependent in part upon associations of pleasure and pain, approbation and disapprobation formed by education in early youth, but in part also on an innate sense of moral beauty and ugliness (how originated need not be discussed), which is possessed by some people in great strength, while some are totally devoid of it--just as some children draw, or are enchanted by music while mere infants, while others do not know "Cherry Ripe" from "Rule Britannia," nor can represent the form of the simplest thing to the end of their lives.
There is a beauty in discovery. There is mathematics in music, a kinship of science and poetry in the description of nature, and exquisite form in a molecule. Attempts to place different disciplines in different camps are revealed as artificial in the face of the unity of knowledge. All literate men are sustained by the philosopher, the historian, the political analyst, the economist, the scientist, the poet, the artisan and the musician.
See deep enough, and you see musically; the heart of Nature being everywhere music, if you can only reach it.
There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking.
The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it, and it is full only as the obedience is entire.
It is the little rift within the lute / That by and by will make the music mute, / And, ever widening, slowly silence all.
The music in his laughter had a way of rounding off the missing notes in her soul.
Some people have lives; some people have music.
That play of black upon white, white upon black, has the intent and takes the form of creative art. It has in it a flow of the spirit and a harmony of music. Everything is lost when suddenly a false note is struck, or one party in a duet suddenly launches forth on an eccentric flight of his own. A masterpiece of a game can be ruined by insensitivity to the feelings of an adversary.
There is another sufficiently obvious fact, which renders the hypothesis that the course of sentient nature is dictated by malevolence quite untenable. A vast multitude of pleasures, and these among the purest and the best, are superfluities, bits of good which are to all appearance unnecessary as inducements to live, and are, so to speak, thrown into the bargain of life. To those who experience them, few delights can be more entrancing than such as are afforded by natural beauty, or by the arts, and especially by music; but they are products of, rather than factors in, evolution, and it is probable that they are known, in any considerable degree, to but a very small proportion of mankind.
And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes, like the warbling of music) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air.
He reads much: / He is a great observer, and he looks / Quite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays, / As thou dost, Anthony; he hears no music: / Seldom he smiles; and smiles in such a sort / As if he mock'd himself, and scorn'd his spirit / That could be moved to smile at anything. / Such men as he be never at heart's ease / Whiles they behold a greater than themselves; / And therefore are they very dangerous.
I spent every lunch period practicing in the music room and that was the only place I wanted to be.
His very foot has music in 't As he comes up the stairs.
When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times and to the latest.
The only truth is music.
If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die. That strain again! it had a dying fall: O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour!
Musik ist der Schlussel vom weiblichen Herzen=--Music is the key to the female heart.
There's no music in a "rest," that I know of, but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life melody, always talking of perseverance, and courage, and fortitude; but patience is the finest and worthiest part of fortitude, and the rarest, too.--_Ruskin._
The demonic in music stands so high that no understanding can reach it, and an influence flows from it which masters all, and for which none can account.
Where words fail, music speaks.
The music in my heart I bore Long after it was heard no more.
We sometimes see a change of expression in our companion, and say, His father or his mother comes to the windows of his eyes, and sometimes a remote relative. In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin--seven or eight ancestors at least--and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is.
The harp that once through Tara's halls The soul of music shed, Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls As if that soul were fled. So sleeps the pride of former days, So glory's thrill is o'er; And hearts that once beat high for praise Now feel that pulse no more.
Oh, could you view the melody Of every grace And music of her face, You 'd drop a tear; Seeing more harmony In her bright eye Than now you hear.
Bright gem instinct with music, vocal spark.
Where painting is weakest, namely, in the expression of the highest moral and spiritual ideas, there music is sublimely strong.--_Mrs. Stowe._
What am I singing? A song of seeds The food of love. Eat the music.
Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music.
Except I be by Sylvia in the night, There is no music in the nightingale.
"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
Morceau d'ensemble=--Piece of music harmonised for several voices.
Fall on me like a silent dew, Or like those maiden showers Which, by the peep of day, do strew A baptism o'er the flowers.
Of all earthly music, that which reaches the farthest into heaven is the beating of a loving heart.
If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.
The true environment of the moral life is God. Here conscience wakes. Here kindles love. Duty here becomes heroic; and that righteousness begins to live which alone is to live forever. But if this Atmosphere is not, the dwarfed soul must perish for mere want of its native air. And its Death is a strictly natural Death. It is not an exceptional judgment upon Atheism. In the same circumstances, in the same averted relation to their environment, the poet, the musician, the artist, would alike perish to poetry, to music, and to art. Natural Law, p. 171.
His very foot has music in 't, / As he comes up the stair.
If music be the food of love, play on; / Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, / The appetite may sicken, and so die.
There is a higher kind of music which we all have to learn, if our life is to be harmonious, beautiful, and useful. There are certain intervals between the young and the old which must be there, which are meant to be there, without which life would be monotonous; but out of these intervals and varieties the true art of life knows how to build up perfect harmonies.... Even great sorrow may be a blessing, by drawing some of our affections away from this life to a better life ... of which, it is true, we know nothing, but from which, when we see the wisdom and love that underlie this life, we may hope everything. We are meant to hope and to trust, and that is often much harder than to see and to know.... The greatest of all arts is the art of life, and the best of all music the harmony of spirits. There are many little rules to be learnt for giving harmony and melody to our life, but the thorough bass must be--love.
Woman's virtue is the music of stringed instruments, which sound best in a room; but man's that of wind instruments, which sound best in the open air.
Sing again, with your dear voice revealing A tone Of some world far from ours, Where music and moonlight and feeling Are one.
The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted.
My body, my soul and my mind, simultaneously response to good music.
When the heart is heavy and low, / The beauty that on earth we find, / Or strain of music on the wind, / Shall touch it like an utter woe!
Sundays observe; think when the bells do chime, / 'Tis angels' music, therefore come not late.
But painting excels and lords over music because it does not die as soon as it is born, as occurs with music, the less fortunate; on the contrary, it continues to exist and reveals itself to be what it is, a single surface. O marvellous science, thou givest lasting life to the perished beauty of mortals, which are thus made more enduring than the works of nature, for these undergo forever the changes of time, and time leads them to inevitable old age! And this science is to divine nature as its works are to the works of nature, and on this account it is worshipped.