Quotes by Composers - Page 12

What sort of world is it at all? Men on the moon and men spinning round the earth like it might be midges round a lamp, and there's not no attention paid to earthly law nor order no more.
Anthony Burgess
Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another. Indeed, he would have found it difficult to tell, among the many places he had lived, precisely where it was he had felt most at home.
Paul Bowles
Thought is more dangerous than you think.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
The emotions - love, mirth, the heroic, wonder, tranquility, fear, anger, sorrow, disgust - are in the audience.
John Cage
Sometimes it's to your advantage for people to think you're crazy.
Thelonious Sphere Monk
What do we teach our children? . . . We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique . . . You may become a Shakespeare a Michelangelo a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything.
Pablo Casals
Fiction should always steer clear of political considerations.
Paul Bowles
If your romance is dying, perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
Don't care what people sayJust follow your own wayDon't give up and use the chanceTo return to innocence.That's not the beginning of the endThat's the return to yourselfThe return to innocence.
Enigma
Love can give you such happiness, then can break the very heart it filled, leaving a hole that can never be fixed or protected by any armour.
Kevin McLeod
Information is not knowledge.Knowledge is not wisdom.Wisdom is not truth.Truth is not beauty.Beauty is not love.Love is not music.Music is THE BEST.
Frank Zappa
I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition." (Said to Leopold Mozart)
Joseph Haydn
Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love love love that is the soul of genius.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates; the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Not all the ravages caused by our merciless age are tangible ones. The subtler forms of destruction, those involving only the human spirit, are the most to be dreaded.
Paul Bowles
All great art is a form of complaint
John Cage
I don't know what London's coming to — the higher the buildings the lower the morals.
Noël Coward
Life is 10 percent what you make it and 90 percent how you take it.
Irving Berlin
Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought, as it is forced in most arts and especially in the art of words.
Franz Liszt
I've allowed myself to lead this little life, when inside me there was so much more.
Willy Russell
My mother, my psychiatrist and an assortment of sedatives eventually convinced me I was delusional.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
Verily, a man without fear is either dead or happy to die.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
I made a wish on a sliver of moonlightA sly grin and a bowl full of stars
Tom Waits
The Ultimate Rule ought to be: 'If it sounds GOOD to you, it's bitchin'; if it sounds BAD to YOU, it's shitty. The more your musical experience, the easier it is to define for yourself what you like and what you don't like.
Frank Zappa
Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid but which none have a right to expect.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Your world is as big as you make it.
Georgia Douglas Johnson
You've got one life to live, and you must live it for you! Do what makes you happy, and do it to the best of your ability. Embrace those who truly love you, and renounce the ones who don't. Love and be loved. Do the things that bring you elation and enjoy them! Shun all negativity and embrace the positive. Do away with all fear, and allow love to envelop you. Be happy. Be free. Be at peace. And be yourself. Eat, drink, be merry ... and make life a stone groove.
Cat Ellington
You will be most readily cured of vanity or presumption by studying the history of music, and by hearing the master pieces which have been produced at different periods.
Robert Schumann
There are mornings when, from the first ray of light seized upon by the eye, and the first simple sounds that get inside the head, the heart is convinced that it is existing in rhythm to a kind of unheard music, familiar but forgotten because long ago it was interrupted and only now has suddenly resumed playing. The silent melodies pass through the fabric of the consciousness like the wind through the meshes of a net, without moving it, but at the same time unmistakably there, all around it. For one who has never lived such a morning, its advent can be a paralyzing experience.
Paul Bowles
Of course he seems to have quite a mind of his own and that is probably where he is weakest.
Arnold Schoenberg
A man like Verdi must write like Verdi.
Giuseppe Verdi
The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, "This is mine," and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes, how many wars, how many murders, how many misfortunes and horrors, would that man have saved the human species, who pulling up the stakes or filling up the ditches should have cried to his fellows: Be sure not to listen to this imposter; you are lost, if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong equally to us all, and the earth itself to nobody!
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Honor your mistake as a hidden intention.
Brian Eno
I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve.
Igor Stravinsky
Every person has a right to risk their own life for the preservation of it.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I don't have a drinking problem 'Cept when I can't get a drink.
Tom Waits
I am in the world only for the purpose of composing.
Franz Schubert
Must it all be either less or more,Either plain or grand?Is it always 'or'?Is it never 'and'?That's what woods are for:For those moments in the woods...Oh, if life were made of moments,Even now and then a bad one--!But if life were only moments,Then you'd never know you had one....to get what you wish, only just for a moment--These are dangerous woods!Let the moment go...Don't forget it for a moment, though.Just remembering you had an 'and,' when you're back to 'or,'Makes the 'or' mean more than is did before.Now I understand--And it's time to leave the woods.
Stephen Sondheim
The Government cannot be concerned any longer with outmoded penelogical theories. Cram criminals together and see what happens, You get concentrated criminality, crime in the midst of punishment.
Anthony Burgess
I was not much afraid of punishment, I was only afraid of disgrace.But that I feared more than death, more than crime, more than anything in the world. I should have rejoiced if the earth had swallowed me up and stifled me in the abyss. But my invincible sense of shame prevailed over everything . It was my shame that made me impudent, and the more wickedly I behaved the bolder my fear of confession made me. I saw nothing but the horror of being found out, of being publicly proclaimed, to my face, as a thief, as a liar, and slanderer.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Trends of the times be damned.
Robert Glasper
To come up with one great sentence, one needs to serve a life sentence.
Lera Auerbach
Contentment comes from wanting what we need, not needing what we want.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
Most people who think they're happy are really just stupid.
Tom Kitt
You have no cause to grumble boy. You made your choice and all this is a consequence of your choice. Whatever now ensues is what you yourself have chosen.
Anthony Burgess
What have we here, laddie? Mysterious scribblings? A secret code? Oh, poems, no less! Poems, everybody!
Roger Waters
I never see problems. I always see challenges. By definition, a problem is something unwelcome or harmful, whereas a challenge is a contest. Contests can be won; and, I love winning.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
Thelonious Monk
All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman, and a pretty girl.
Charlie Chaplin
To live fully, we must learn to use things and love people, and not love things and use people.
John Powell
[BURR]I am the one thing in life I can control.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
Life is 10 percent what you make itand 90 percent how you take it.
Irving Berlin
I've never known a musician who regretted being one. Whatever deceptions life may have in store for you, music itself is not going to let you down.
Virgil Thomson
Devour your fear.
Simon Holt
Whether the woman shares the man's passion or not, whether she is willing or unwilling to satisfy it, she always repulses him and defends herself, though not always with the same vigour, and therefore not always with the same success.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Until you see the cross as that which is done _by_ you, you will never appreciate that it is done _for_ you.
John Scott
Moments come & go, but special moments last a lifetime.Make them count!
Mark Hewer
Music is nectar for the soul.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
Love is a rare and precious thing. Squander it at your peril.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
The danger of memory is that it can turn anyone into a prophet.
Anthony Burgess