Quotes by Composers - Page 17

Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.
Anthony Burgess
I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface.
Stephen Sondheim
The 21st chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. ----- "A Clockwork Orange Resucked" intro to first full American version 1986
Anthony Burgess
Be proactive. Passivity is a poison. Avoid it like the plague. Actively participate in life. You are not a bystander standing on the sidelines of life. Get in the game and go for the goal. Choose what you will do with your life. Choose what you will do with your time. What will you do? What will you watch, read, accomplish, and become? Accomplishment is a result of action. Act the part. Don’t pretend or put on a façade. Don’t wait. Don’t pause. Don’t hesitate. Go. Be. Do. Accomplish. Get it done. ACT. ACT NOW!
Jerald Simon
Only by fully experiencing fear, can you ever hope to control it.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
We're just two lost souls Swimming in a fish bowl, Year after year, Running over the same old ground. What have we found? The same old fears. Wish you were here.
Roger Waters
To utter a word? no that will only heavy the air you breath, for your eyes speak more then your pretty mouth
William Brade
The present is a point just passed.
David Russell
Art is not an end in itself but a means of addressing humanity.
M. P. Moussorgsky
The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, 'Is there a meaning to music?' My answer would be, 'Yes.' And 'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?' My answer to that would be, 'No'.
Aaron Copland
Political writers argue in regard to the love of liberty with the same philosophy that philosophers do in regard to the state of nature; by the things they see they judge of things very different which they have never seen, and they attribute to men a natural inclination to slavery, on account of the patience with which the slaves within their notice carry the yoke; not reflecting that it is with liberty as with innocence and virtue, the value of which is not known but by those who possess them, though the relish for them is lost with the things themselves. I know the charms of your country, said Brasidas to a satrap who was comparing the life of the Spartans with that of the Persepolites; but you can not know the pleasures of mine.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The insistent drums were an unwelcome reminder of the existence of another world, wholly autonomous, with its own necessities and patterns. The message they were beating out, over and over, was for her; it was saying, not precisely that she did not exist but rather that it did not matter whether she existed or not, that her presence was of no consequence to the rest of the cosmos. It was a sensation that suddenly paralyzed her with dread. There had never been any question of her “mattering”; it went without saying that she mattered, because she was important to herself. But what was the part of her to which she mattered?
Paul Bowles
Ultimately, musicians of the world must come realise the potential of their calling.Like the shamans, we may serve as healers, metaphysicians, inciters, exciters,spiritual guides and sources of inspiration. If the musician is illuminated from within,he becomes a lamp that lights other lamps. Then he is serving planet and its people,healing what ails us. Such music is truly important. It is said that “only one who obeys can truly command.” When the artist is immersed in a services,giving himself up over and over again, another paradox occurs:He is being seen by all others as a master.
Kenny Werner
When I am ..... completely myself, entirely alone... or during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how these ideas come I know not nor can I force them.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
I do not need drugs to be a genius, do not take a genius to be human, but I need your smile to be happy.
Charlie Chaplin
An unbroken horse erects his mane, paws the ground and starts back impetuously at the sight of the bridle; while one which is properly trained suffers patiently even whip and spur: so savage man will not bend his neck to the yoke to which civilised man submits without a murmur, but prefers the most turbulent state of liberty to the most peaceful slavery. We cannot therefore, from the servility of nations already enslaved, judge of the natural disposition of mankind for or against slavery; we should go by the prodigious efforts of every free people to save itself from oppression. I know that the former are for ever holding forth in praise of the tranquillity they enjoy in their chains, and that they call a state of wretched servitude a state of peace: miserrimam servitutem pacem appellant. But when I observe the latter sacrificing pleasure, peace, wealth, power and life itself to the preservation of that one treasure, which is so disdained by those who have lost it; when I see free-born animals dash their brains out against the bars of their cage, from an innate impatience of captivity; when I behold numbers of naked savages, that despise European pleasures, braving hunger, fire, the sword and death, to preserve nothing but their independence, I feel that it is not for slaves to argue about liberty.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The voice of love calls to you, my son.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems. On the cross, he forgave the people who crucified him. Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don't know what makes people so cruel. Try being a gay woman in the Middle East -- you're as good as dead.
Elton John
Was that me? Yes it was. Was that him? No it wasn't..t Just a trick of the woods!t Just a moment,t One peculiar passing moment.t Must it all be either less or more,t Either plain or grand?t Is it always 'or'?t Is it never 'and'?t That's what woods are for:t For those moments in the woods...t Oh, if life were made of moments,t Even now and then a bad one--!t But if life were only moments,t Then you'd never know you had one.t First a witch, then a child, then a Prince, then a moment--t Who can live in the woods?t And to get what you wish, only just for a moment--t These are dangerous woods..t Let the moment go..t Don't forget it for a moment, though.t Just remembering you had an 'and,' when you're back to 'or,'t Makes the 'or' mean more than is did before.t Now I understand--And it's time to leave the woods.
Stephen Sondheim
The Prince stood beside the timpanist to count his rests for him and see that he came in in the right place. I suppressed all the trumpet passages which were clearly beyond the players' grasp. The solitary trombone was left to his own devices; but as he wisely confined himself to the notes with which he was thoroughly familiar, such as A flat, D and F, and was careful to avoid all others, his success in the role was almost entirely a silent one.
Hector Berlioz
He awoke, opened his eye. The room meant very little to him; he was too deeply immersed in the non-being from which he had just come. If he had not the energy to ascertain his position in time and space, he also lacked the desire. ... In utter comfort, utter relaxation he lay absolutely still for a while, and then sank back into on the the light momentary sleeps that occur after a long, profound one.
Paul Bowles
If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
One of the most devastating symptoms of pride is the unwillingness to forgive.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
Music is the cup that holds the wine of silence. Sound is that cup, but empty. Noise is that cup, but broken.
Robert Fripp
Liberty is like those solid and tasty foods or those full-bodied wines which are appropriate for nourishing and strengthening robust constitutions that are used to them, but which overpower, ruin and intoxicate the weak and delicate who are not suited for them.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Any great art work … revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world - the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.
Leonard Bernstein
...an animal, at the end of a few months, is what it will be all its life; and its species, at the end of a thousand years, is what it was in the first of those thousand years. Why is man alone subject to becoming an imbecile?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I'll admit that writing doesn't always come, but I'm totally against walking around looking at the sky when you're experiencing a block, waiting for inspiration to strike you. Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov didn't like each other and agreed on very few things, but they were of one opinion on this: you had to write constantly. If you can't write a major work, write minor trifles. If you can't write at all, orchestrate something.
Dmitri Shostakovich
There are... otherwise quite decent people who are so dull of nature that they believe that they must attribute the swift flight of fancy to some illness of the psyche, and thus it happens that this or that writer is said to create not other than while imbibing intoxicating drink or that his fantasies are the result of overexcited nerves and resulting fever. But who can fail to know that, while a state of psychical excitement caused by the one or other stimulant may indeed generate some lucky and brilliant ideas, it can never produce a well-founded, substantial work of art that requires the utmost presence of mind.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
Among the many short cuts to science, we badly need someone to teach us the art of learning with difficulty.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The downtrodden who are the great creators of slang hurl pithiness and colour at poverty and oppression.
Anthony Burgess
Am reading more of Oscar Wilde. What a tiresome, affected sod.
Noël Coward
I've heard it said that people come into our lives for a reasonBringing something we must learnAnd we are led to those who help us most to grow If we let them and we help them in return.
Stephen Schwartz
Armon stared into the wild darkness of his opponent and saw a reflection of his own fall.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
The world would not be in such a snarl, had Marx been Groucho instead of Karl.
Irving Berlin
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its students."]
Hector Berlioz
Whatever may be my activity in a given moment (whether I am composing, or whether I am making love . . .), I feel pleasure if there is an obstacle placed in my path but one not greater than my ability to overcome. If circumstances paralyze my energy, I suffer. From this point of view, pleasure and pain accompany every moment of our life, even if we try to disregard them.
Alexander Scriabin
Bach is an astronomer, discovering the most marvellous stars. Beethoven challenges the universe. I only try to express the soul and the heart of man.
Frédéric Chopin
A taste for ostentation is rarely associated in the same souls with a taste for honesty
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Be grateful for each moment, for we know not which will be our last.
Mark Hewer
Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.
Frédéric Chopin
Leave the world in better conditions in wich you found it.
Baden Powell
Hamlet' dwarfs 'Hamilton' - it dwarfs pretty much everything - but there's a revealing similarity between them. Shakespeare's longest play leaves its audience in the dark about some basic and seemingly crucial facts. It's not as if the Bard forgot, in the course of all those words, to tell us whether Hamlet was crazy or only pretending: He wanted us to wonder. He forces us to work on a puzzle that has no definite answer. And this mysteriousness is one reason why we find the play irresistible. 'Hamilton' is riddled with question marks. The first act begins with a question, and so does the second. The entire relationship between Hamilton and Burr is based on a mutual and explicit lack of comprehension: 'I will never understand you,' says Hamilton, and Burr wonders, 'What it is like in his shoes?' Again and again, Lin distinguishes characters by what they wish they knew. 'What'd I miss?' asks Jefferson in the song that introduces him. 'Would that be enough?' asks Eliza in the song that defines her. 'Why do you write like you're running out of time?' asks everybody in a song that marvels at Hamilton's drive, and all but declares that there's no way to explain it. 'Hamilton', like 'Hamlet', gives an audience the chance to watch a bunch of conspicuously intelligent and well-spoken characters fill the stage with 'words, words, words,' only to discover, again and again, the limits to what they can comprehend.
Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter
The fabric of existence weaves itself whole.
Charles Ives
[WASHINGTON]It’s alright, you want to fight, you’ve got a hungerI was just like you when I was youngerHead full of fantasies of dyin’ like a martyr?[HAMILTON]Yes[WASHINGTON]Dying is easy, young man. Living is harder
Lin-Manuel Miranda
Look, I don't see why bad artists - I mean artists who are obviously incompetent... - why they should be presented hypocritically as good artists just because they're supposed to be advancing the frontiers of freedom of expression or... ...demonstrating that there should be no limit on subject matter.
Anthony Burgess
There is only one kind of immorality in fiction, and that is when you write badly.
Anthony Burgess
Vasectomy means not ever having to say you're sorry.
Larry Adler
Though it's fearful, Though it's deep, though it's dark And though you may lose the path, Though you may encounter wolves, You can't just act, You have to listen. you can't just act, You have to think. Though it's dark, There are always wolves, There are always spells, There are always beans, Or a giant dwells there. So into the woods you go again, You have to every now and then. Into the woods, no telling when, Be ready for the journey. Into the woods, but not too fast or what you wish, you lose at last. Into the woods, but mind the past. Into the woods, but mind the future. Into the woods, but not to stray, Or tempt the wolf, or steal from the giant-- The way is dark, The light is dim, But now there's you, me, her, and him. The chances look small, The choices look grim, But everything you learn there Will help when you return there. The light is getting dimmer.. I think I see a glimmer-- Into the woods--you have to grope, But that's the way you learn to cope. Into the woods to find there's hope Of getting through the journey. Into the woods, each time you go, There's more to learn of what you know. Into the woods, but not too slow-- Into the woods, it's nearing midnight-- Into the woods to mind the wolf, To heed the witch, to honor the giant, To mind, to heed, to find, to think, to teach, to join, to go to the Festival! Into the woods, Into the woods, Into the woods, Then out of the woods-- And happy ever after!
Stephen Sondheim
I ask: which of the two, civil or natural life, is more likely to become insufferable to those who live it? We see about us practically no people who do not complain about their existence; many even deprive themselves of it to the extent they are able, and the combination of divine and human laws is hardly enough to stop this disorder.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Let your intimate friends be chosen from such as are better informed than yourself.
Robert Schumann
Let us not forget that the greatest composers were also the greatest thieves. They stole from everyone and everywhere.
Pablo Casals
When the weather's rough and it's whiskey in the rain it's best to wrap your savior up in cellophane.
Tom Waits
It was obvious from their expressions that they believed the wellbeing of R.’s inhabitants was endangered by my youth. The visit was very enjoyable, but the horror of the previous night still clung to me.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
Turing presented his new offering in the form of a thought experiment, based on a popular Victorian parlor game. A man and a woman hide, and a judge is asked to determine which is which by relying only on the texts of notes passed back and forth.Turing replaced the woman with a computer. Can the judge tell which is the man? If not, is the computer conscious? Intelligent? Does it deserve equal rights?It's impossible for us to know what role the torture Turing was enduring at the time played in his formulation of the test. But it is undeniable that one of the key figures in the defeat of fascism was destroyed, by our side, after the war, because he was gay. No wonder his imagination pondered the rights of strange creatures.
Jaron Lanier
Life's only choosing when to die. Life's a big postponement because the choice is so difficult. It's a tremendous relief not to have to choose.
Anthony Burgess
The happiest is he who suffers the least pain the most miserable he who enjoys the least pleasure.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
about: Don’t post anonymously unless you really might be in danger.
Jaron Lanier
Laughter is much better than anger.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
We've reached a point in human history where higher education no longer works. As a result of technology, higher education in its traditional college setting no longer works. It will never be effective or progressive enough to keep up with the growing needs of employers who look to college institutions for their future employees.I can appreciate the good intent the college system set out to achieve. For previous generations, the formula actually worked. Students enrolled into universities that were affordable, they gained marketable skills and they earned good jobs. Since there was a proven track record of success, parents instilled the value of college in their children thinking they would achieve the same success story they did, but unfortunately Wall Street was watching. Wall Street, the federal government and the college system ganged up and skyrocketed the cost of tuition to record highs. This was easy to do because not only did they have posters blanketing high schools showing kids what a loser they would be if they didn't go to college, they also had Mom and Dad at home telling them the same thing.This system - spending 4+ years pursuing a college education when the world is changing at the speed of light - no longer works and it's not fixable. We now have the biggest employer's market in human history, where employers have their pick of the litter, and because of this employees will get paid less and less and benefits will continue to erode.
Michael Price