Symphony Quotes - Page 7

• If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing Double Dahlias in his garden.

  David W. Wolfe

  Happiness, Happy, Writing

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• A thing of orchestrated hell-a terrible symphony of light and flame.

  Edward R. Murrow

  Light, Flames, Air Power

  Edward R. Murrow (1967). “In Search of Light: The Broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow, 1938-1961”

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• I never want projects to be finished; I have always believed in unfinished work. I got that from Schubert, you know, the 'Unfinished Symphony.'

  Yoko Ono

  Unfinished Work, Want, Projects

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• The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need. The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it.

  Louis Kahn

  Art, Needs, World

  Louis I. Kahn (1986). “Louis I. Kahn: l'uomo, il maestro”

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• The critics say that Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony has no form. They are wrong; it has the form of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony.

  Edward Abbey

  Shostakovich, Form, Critics

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.40, RosettaBooks

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• Mozart, striving for perfection, wrote the same symphony forty-one times. In his case, it worked. He wrote a perfect symphony.

  Edward Abbey

  Perfect, Strive, Cases

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.41, RosettaBooks

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• When we look at a painting, or hear a symphony, or read a book, and feel more Named, then, for us, that work is a work of Christian art. But to look at a work of art and then to make a judgment as to whether or not it is art, and whether or not it is Christian, is presumptuous. It is something we cannot know in any conclusive way. We can know only if it speaks within our own hearts, and leads us to living more deeply with Christ in God.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Christian, Art, Book

  Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art”, p.41, Convergent Books

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• It feels like my job is to support people. I support great artists. When I worked with a symphony, I sat in the third chair, not the first chair.

  Nile Rodgers

  Jobs, Artist, People

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• What are our conductors giving us year after year? Only fresh corpses. Over these beautifully embalmed sonatas, toccatas, symphonies and operas the public dance the jitterbug. Night and day without let the radio drowns us in a hog-wash of the most nauseating, sentimental ditties. From the churches comes the melancholy dirge of the dead Christ, a music which is no more sacred than a rotten turnip.

  Henry Miller

  Night, Years, Giving

  Henry Miller (1945). “The Air-conditioned Nightmare”, [New York] : New directions

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• The truth is . . . that the great artists of the world are never puritans, and seldom ever ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man - that is, virtuous in the YMCA sense - has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading, and it is highly improbable that the thing has ever been done by a virtuous woman.

  H. L. Mencken

  Art, Book, Reading

  H. L. Mencken, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (2010). “H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series”, Hubsta Ltd

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• No symphony orchestra ever played music like a two-year-old girl laughing with a puppy.

  Bernard Williams

  Family, Girl, Dog

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• From the glow of enthusiasm I let the melody escape. I pursue it. Breathless I catch up with it. It flies again, it disappears, it plunges into a chaos of diverse emotions. I catch it again, I seize it, I embrace it with delight... I multiply it by modulations, and at last I triumph in the first theme. There is the whole symphony.

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  Insightful, Triumph, Delight

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• When I do an operation, it's half a dozen people. When it goes beautifully, it's like a symphony, with everybody playing their part.

  Atul Gawande

  People, Half, Dozen

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• Funny thing, your brain, how it always functions on one level or another. How, even stuck in some sort of subconcious limbo, it works your lungs, your muscle twitches, your heart, in fact, in symphony with your heart, allowing it to feel love. Pain. Jealousy. Guilt. I wonder if it’s the same for people, lost in comas. Is there really such a thing

  Ellen Hopkins

  Pain, Heart, Funny Things

  Ellen Hopkins (2012). “Ellen Hopkins: Crank Trilogy”, p.148, Simon and Schuster

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• When I listen to a symphony I love, I don't get from it what the composer got. His 'Yes' was different from mine. He could have no concern for mine and no exact conception of it. That answer is too personal to each man. But in giving himself what he wanted, he gave me a great experience.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Giving, Different

  Ayn Rand (2005). “The Fountainhead”, p.514, Penguin

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• Although, I am proud of all my Symphonies as they all have something special to say, my particular favourite is the Fifth. As the great Mahler expert Donald Mitchell said that if Mahler had written another Symphony, it would have been my Fifth!

  Malcolm Arnold

  Special, Experts, Mahler

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• If all experienced God in the same way and returned Him an identical worship, the song of the Church triumphant would have no symphony, it would be played like an orchestra in which all instruments played the same note.

  C. S. Lewis

  Song, Church, Would Be

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.184, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I don't know if this is true to you but for me sometimes it gets so bad that anything else say like looking at a bird on an overhead power line seems as great as a Beethoven symphony. then you forget it and you're back again.

  Charles Bukowski

  Bird, Lines, Sometimes

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• Why are numbers beautiful? It’s like asking why is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony beautiful.
  If you don’t see why, someone can’t tell you. I know numbers are beautiful.
  If they aren’t beautiful, nothing is.

  Paul Erdos

  Beautiful, Education, Math

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• We in the "developed" world seem to have many auditory strategies that insulate us from the presence of silence, simplicity, and solitude. When I return to Western culture after time in desert, mountain or forest, I discover how we have filled our world with a multiplicity of noises, a symphony of forgetfulness that keeps our won thoughts and realizations, feelings and intuitions out of audible range.

  Joan Halifax

  Our World, Silence, Simplicity

  Joan Halifax (2007). “The Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom”, p.38, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• I would think, of all the saxophones, the baritone would be the most logical instrument if anybody was adding a voice to the symphony orchestra.

  Gerry Mulligan

  Thinking, Voice, Would Be

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• Empires fall, ids explode, great symphonies are written, and behind all of it is a single instinct that demands satisfaction.

  Sherwin B. Nuland

  Fall, Demand, Empires

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• There is the happiness which comes from creative effort. The joy of dreaming, creating, building, whether in painting a picture, writing an epic, singing a song, composing a symphony, devising new invention, creating a vast industry.

  Henry Miller

  Dream, Song, Writing

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• And yet, something tied them together, strong than any of that, something with the power to conduct her blood and breath like a symphony, so that anything she did to fight against it felt like discord, like disharmony with her self.

  Laini Taylor

  Strong, Fighting, Self

  Laini Taylor (2011). “Daughter of Smoke and Bone: Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy”, p.150, Hachette UK

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• No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.

  Walter Benjamin

  Beholder, Reader, Listeners

  Walter Benjamin (1968). “Illuminations”, p.58, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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