Brass Quotes - Page 3

• Louis Armstrong changed all the brass players around, but after Bird, all of the instruments had to change - drums, piano, bass, trombones, trumpets, saxophones, everything.

  Cootie Williams

  Memorable, Player, Piano

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• Some make their worlds without knowing it. Their universes are just sesame seeds and three-day weekends and dial tones and skinned knees and physics and driftwood and emerald earrings and books dropped in bathtubs and holes in guitars and plastic and empathy and hardwood and heavy water and high black stockings and the history of the Vikings and brass and obsolescence and burnt hair and collapsed souffles and the impossibility of not falling in love in an art museum with the person standing next to you looking at the same painting and all the other things that just happen and are.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Falling In Love, Art, Book

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• It’s a very American illness, the idea of giving yourself away entirely to the idea of working in order to achieve some sort of brass ring that usually involves people feeling some way about you – I mean, people wonder why we walk around feeling alienated and lonely and stressed out.

  David Foster Wallace

  Lonely, Mean, Order

  4 Copy quote

• In her bottled up is a woman peppery as curry, a yam of a woman of butter and brass.

  Marge Piercy

  Yams, Curry

  Marge Piercy (2013). “Circles on the Water”, p.96, Knopf

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• I had a good political career, and I have a good business career. I didn't get the brass ring. But I did very well.

  Dan Quayle

  Careers, Political, Good Business

  "Before Palin, Republicans had Quayle". Interview with Cathleen Decker, articles.latimes.com. September 5, 2008.

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• I regard the amount of brainpower going into money management as a national scandal. When some idiot would get rich, they'd say, 'Well, old Charlie was out in the field playing the big brass tuba on the day it rained gold.' A lot of people have become rich lately who were playing the tuba on the day it rained gold.

  Charlie Munger

  People, Gold, Tubas

  10 Copy quote

• Don Quixote followed nature, and being satisfied with his first sleep, did not solicit more. As for Sancho, he never wanted a second, for the first lasted him from night to morning, indicating a sound body and a mind free from care; but his master, being unable to sleep himself awakened him, saying, "I am amazed, Sancho, at the torpor of thy soul; it seems as if thou wert made of marble or brass, insensible of emotion or sentiment!

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Morning, Sleep, Night

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1866). “Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha”, p.681

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• The fortune my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of the spirit. I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.

  Ayn Rand

  Wind, Coins, Treasure

  Ayn Rand (2012). “Study Guide: Anthem (Study Gudie and Book)”, p.102, BookCaps Study Guides

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• There never seems to be any trouble brewing around a bar until a woman puts that high heel over the brass rail. Don't ask me why, but somehow women at bars seem to create trouble among men.

  Humphrey Bogart

  Men, High Heels, Bars

  17 Copy quote

• An archer competing for a clay vessel shoots effortlessly, his or her skill and concentration unimpeded. If the prize is changed to a brass ornament, the hands begin to shake. If it is changed to gold, he or she squints as if going blind. The abilities do not deteriorate, but belief in them does, as he or she allows the supposed value of an external reward to cloud the vision.

  Zhuangzi

  Archer, Clouds, Hands

  34 Copy quote

• White and scrubbed, antique brass fixtures and a skylight letting in a flood of sunshine. Wow. You could get a tan standing around in the shower, for Christ's sake.

  Lilith Saintcrow

  Sunshine, White, Antiques

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• Virtue and learning, like gold, have their intrinsic value: but if they are not polished, they certainly lose a great deal of their luster: and even polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Inspirational Life, People, Gold

  Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1855). “The Works of Lord Chesterfield: Including His Letters to His Son, Etc : to which is Prefixed, an Original Life of the Author”, p.150

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• It's time for me to give out an award to newly elected Majority Leader John Boehner. Mr. Boehner was elected just a few days ago to reform House Republicans, who are feeling the heat from lobbyist scandals. Well, CNN found out that he rents his two-bedroom apartment from a lobbyist who had clients who had interests in legislation that Boehner sponsored. And for that, Mr. Boehner, you've just won a pair of Stephen Colbert's big brass balls.

  Stephen Colbert

  Two, Cnn, Awards

  4 Copy quote

• What I'm proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude - that you act as though you've never been there before. So that you're not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before.

  John Cage

  Attitude, People, Tourists

  "Musicage: Cage Muses on Words, Art, Music". Book by John Cage, January, 1996.

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• In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment in June.

  Virginia Woolf

  Eye, Men, June

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.852, Delphi Classics

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• Faith without a measure of doubt ain't worth a brass farthin.

  Howard Frank Mosher

  Doubt

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• Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.

  Frederick Douglass

  Men, Eagles, Black

  Frederick Douglass (2000). “Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings”, p.536, Chicago Review Press

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• I was ready to approach her with my English charm, when her brass knuckled boyfriend grabbed me by the arm.

  Elton John

  Revenge, Arms, Retribution

  Song: Grow Some Funk Of Your Own, Album: Rock Of The Westies

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• In Germany, you have a huge official memorial to the murdered Jews and then you have this artist who's been putting these stumbling blocks, these brass cobblestones, outside the houses Jews were taken away from. It's somewhat controversial and has met some resistance.

  Amy Waldman

  Block, Taken, Artist

  9 Copy quote

• At the age of three I began to look around my grandfather's library. My first knowledge of astronomy came from reading and looking at pictures at that time. By the time I was six I remember him buying books for me. ... I think I was eight, he bought me a three-inch telescope on a brass mounting. ... So, as far back as I can remember, I had an early interest in science in general, astronomy in particular.

  Jesse L. Greenstein

  Book, Reading, Knowledge

  4 Copy quote

• Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,
  Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
  Can be retentive to the strength of spirit;
  But life, being weary of these worldly bars,
  Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

  William Shakespeare

  Life, Strong, Wall

  'Julius Caesar' (1599) act 1, sc. 3, l. 93

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• There is something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there's also something in it which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is. And if it finally refuses conversion its corruption will be worse than the corruption of what ye call the lower passions. It is a stronger angel, and therefor, when it falls, a fiercer devil.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Mistake, Fall

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• If only there was a way I could cover my tension with the scent of eau de brass valls instead.

  Jeaniene Frost

  Scent, Way, Tension

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• The library would've cheered me up, most days. I loved the heavy oaken tables, the high walls stacked with books to the ceiling, the musty smell of old pages and the heavy brass fixtures that had gone dark with age and wear.

  Claudia Gray

  Wall, Book, Dark

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• I remember when I was 5 living on Pulaski Street in Brooklyn, the hallway of our building had a brass banister and a great sound, a great echo system. I used to sing in the hallway.

  Barbra Streisand

  Echoes, Sound, Brooklyn

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