Symphony Quotes - Page 12

• Making a garden is somehow like conducting a symphony - different plants come forward at different times and you need to think very carefully about their placement in relation to each other.

  Elisabeth Murdoch

  Garden, Thinking, Different

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• The drama, like the symphony, does not teach or prove anything.

  John Millington Synge

  Drama, Writing, Doe

  John Millington Synge, Ann Saddlemyer (1998). “Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays”, p.28, Oxford University Press, USA

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• A great painting or symphony or play, doesn't diminish us, but enlarges us, and we, too, want to make our own cry of affirmation to the power of Creation behind the Universe.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Dream, Play, Want

  Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “A Circle of Quiet”, p.89, Open Road Media

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• I listen to the summer symphony outside my window. Truthfully, it's not a symphony at all. There's no tune, no melody, only the same notes over and over. Chirps and tweets and trills and burples. It's as if the insect orchestra is forever tuning its instruments, forever waiting for the maestro to tap his baton and bring them to order. I, for one, hope the maestro never comes. I love the music mess of it.

  Jerry Spinelli

  Music, Summer, Order

  Jerry Spinelli (2007). “Love, Stargirl”, p.74, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• I'm too busy playing. When I'm playing I don't pay attention to who's listening. When I was listening I listened to symphony orchestras, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Stravinsky. You don't listen to one instrument; you listen to music.

  Charles Mingus

  Listening, Attention, Orchestra

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• Few tears will be shed over the demise of the East German army, but what about East Germany’s eighty symphony orchestras, bound to lose some subsidies? Or the whole East German system, which covered everyone in a security blanket from day care to health care, from housing to education? Some people are beginning to express, if ever so slightly, nostalgia for that Berlin Wall.

  Bob Simon

  Wall, Army, Day Care

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• My ex-wife was trying to be nice once, so she took me to a concert in Los Angeles. I went with her to Symphony Hall, and the orchestra was playing. When the show started, the spotlight was sharp on this one man (Andres Segovia) and he had sombrero on and his guitar propped up like this and, oh man ... he was a master ! - I really heard it. That one guitar sounded like a whole orchestra to me.

  B. B. King

  Music, Nice, Men

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• These motivational tapes have really inspired me! I'm going to make a million dollars, buy my own company and retire early. Then, I'm going to write a novel and a symphony and give all the profits to charity. Then next month, I'll figure out how to do it.

  Randy Glasbergen

  Inspirational, Funny, Motivation

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• Muti is going to do the Alpine Symphony this year. He will do it well because it is not very well known.

  Eugene Ormandy

  Funny, Years, Orchestra

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• Bizet was a very young man when he composed this symphony, so play it softly.

  Eugene Ormandy

  Funny, Men, Play

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• The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. It is marvelous, yet simple.

  Victor Hugo

  Simple, World, Immortality

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 339, 1895.

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• But so many Christians are like deaf people at a concert. They study the programme carefully, believe every statement make in it, speak respectfully of the quality of the music, but only really hear a phrase now and again. So they have no notion at all of the mighty symphony which fills the universe, to which our lives are destined to make their tiny contribution, and which is the self-expression of the Eternal God.

  Evelyn Underhill

  Christian, Believe, Self

  Evelyn Underhill, Christopher L. Webber (2006). “Advent with Evelyn Underhill”, p.17, Church Publishing, Inc.

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• Music - so different from painting - is the art which we enjoy most in company with others. A symphony, presented in a room with one other listener, would please him but little.

  Robert Schumann

  Art, Different, Littles

  Robert Schumann (1983). “On Music and Musicians”, p.45, Univ of California Press

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• I'm familiar to people. They feel comfortable with me. I started in live television. I perform live all the time. I sing with the piano. I sing with a symphony. I can sit and ask questions. I can listen. I'm very comfortable in most situations.

  Florence Henderson

  Piano, People, Comfort

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• My mother was the concert master of the symphony. Absurdity and eccentricity were not criticized.

  Martin Short

  Mother, Masters, Concerts

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• Our life a harp is, with unnumbered strings, And tones and symphonies; but our poor skill Some shallow notes from its great music brings.

  John Boyle O'Reilly

  Life, Skills, Tone

  John Boyle O'Reilly (1882). “Songs, Legends and Ballads”

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• Abolishing the book is like abolishing the symphony, or sonata form, or the sonnet, or the wall painting.

  David Gelernter

  Wall, Book, Painting

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

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• When asked by a grumpily puzzled professor what "rules" he followed, Debussy is said to have retorted, mon plaisir "whatever I please" and he further claimed that more was to be gained by watching the sun rise than by listening to the Pastoral Symphony. Although such remarks were intended to shock, they contain a core of Debussyan verity.

  Claude Debussy

  Past, Listening, Sun

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• Loneliness is the theme, and I play it like a symphony, in endless variations.

  Jonathan Tropper

  Loneliness, Play, Variation

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• Proportion ... You can't help thinking about it in these London streets, where it doesn't exist ... It's like listening to a symphony of cats to walk along them. Senseless discords and a horrible disorder all the way ... We need no barbarians from outside; they're on the premises, all the time.

  Aldous Huxley

  Cat, Thinking, Listening

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• These are thy glorious works Parent of Good, Almighty, thine this universal Frame, Thus wondrous fair; thy self how wondrous then! Unspeakable, who sitst above these Heavens To us invisible or dimly seen In these thy lowest works, yet these declare Thy goodness beyond thought, and Power Divine: Speak ye who best can tell, ye Sons of light, Angels, for ye behold him, and with songs And choral symphonies, Day without Night, Circle his Throne rejoicing, ye in Heav'n, On Earth join all ye Creatures to extoll Him first, him last, him midst, and without end.

  John Milton

  God, Song, Angel

  'Paradise Lost' (1667) bk. 5, l. 164

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• The framework of a symphony must be so strong that it forces you to follow it, regardless of the environment and circumstances.

  Jean Sibelius

  Strong, Environment, Framework

  Jean Sibelius' remarks to Jussi Jalas, October 1, 1939.

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• I don't think that either self-deprecation or self-aggrandizement is among the defining qualities of an artist... Beethoven could have been forgiven if his symphonies had gone to his head. Gretchaninoff could also be forgiven if his Dobrinya Nikititch went to his head. But neither one could be forgiven for writing a piece that was amoral, servile, the work of a flunky.

  Dmitri Shostakovich

  Writing, Artist, Thinking

  "Composers on Music". Book edited by Josiah Fisk and Jeff Nichols, p. 354, letter to Isaac Glikman (February 26, 1960), 1997.

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• A man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert without any help from anyone else, playing on a single instrument--a piano, say, which is a little orchestra in itself. Such a man is a little world in himself; and the effect produced by various instruments together, he produces single-handed, in the unity of his own consciousness. Like the piano, he has no place in a symphony; he is a soloist and performs by himself--in soli tude, it may be; or if in the company with other instruments, only as principal; or for setting the tone, as in singing.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Men, Artist, Piano

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2012). “Counsels and Maxims”, p.21, Simon and Schuster

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• Life is horrible, but it is not relentlessly black from wire to wire. You can sit down and hear a Mozart symphony, or you can watch the Marx Brothers, and this will give you a pleasant escape for a while. And that is about the best that you can do.

  Woody Allen

  Brother, Giving, Black

  "Woody Allen's World: Whatever Works". Interview with Robert E. Lauder, www.commonwealmagazine.org. April 15, 2010.

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