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Quote Collection My little quote book is a continual source of enlightenment, humor, and comfort. Some of these quotes I agree with enthusiastically, and others I include simply because they make (or, once upon a time, made) me think. The speakers might be famous, fictional, or friends. The page numbers should help you to return and enjoy the little quote book at your leisure. Please note that I cannot verify the accuracy of these quotes, as I have collected them from various sources. PAGE ONE "I'm not one who uses words like
'never' or 'always'those
are absolute terms I never use." "Ending a sentence with a
preposition is something up with which I will not put." "Happy is the man who can make a
living by his hobby!" "I am a great believer in luck,
and I find the harder I work the more I have of it." "Be yourself. Who else is better
qualified?" "There is no law against composing
music when one has no ideas whatsoever." "You know why conductors live so
long? Because we perspire so much." "Music is good, not evil. Poetry
is good, not evil. Primitive, but oh, so true!"
PAGE TWO "Gentlemen, the deeper I delve
into the sciences of this universe, the more clearly I believe that one God or
Force or Influence has organized it all for our discovery." "Isn't it clear that there are
many occasions when shooting a cannon at sparrows is completely unnecessary and
pointless?" "Music has a great advantage:
without mentioning anything, it can say everything." "There is a very severe critic
inside all of us. It's not so hard to be tough, but is it worth airing your
aural preferences before everyone." "God will not force anyone to
Heaven." "Never allow anyone to call
themselves Americans who tries to remove religion from politics."
PAGE THREE "Careerism is the determination to
reign in hell rather than serve in heaven." "Television must be a medium; it
sure isn't rare or well done." "Dictatorship is the most
effective form of govenment. The only problem is sometimes you get some bad guys
in there." "Try not. Do or do not.
There is no try." "God put me on earth to accomplish
a certain number of things. Right now I am so far behind I will never die!" "It is not enough that the artist
should be well prepared for the public. The public must be well prepared for
what it is going to hear." "The First Amendment does not give
us the right to run away from our religious values."
PAGE FOUR "The essence of music is
revelation; one cannot make an accounting of it." "Here I am, where I ought to
be." "No rock and roll ensemble,
however inspired, can deliver the kind of musical variety obtainable with the
resources of 110 instruments." "Things are only impossible until
they are not." "Can't you listen to chords
without knowing their provenance and destination? Where do they come from? Where
do they go to? Do you really have to know that? Listen to them: that's
enough. But if you don't want to understand, run along to the Head and
tell him I'm ruining your ear." "Live in such a way that people
who know you but don't know Christ will want to know Christ because they know
you."
PAGE FIVE "Don't be dismayed at good-byes. A
farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments
or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends." "Logic is the beginning of wisdom,
not the end." "Science, if you think truly,
forces to a belief in a God." "Let's not use a sickle, let's use
a combine." "I see no conflict between science
and religion. When you take truth in either one of these realms, science or
religion, they match perfectly." "Tired minds don't plan well.
Sleep first. Plan later." "A little nonsense now and then is
admonished by the wisest men."
PAGE SIX "Precious moments happen when you
least expect themalways
stay alert." "God gave us Music that we might
pray without words." "The future belongs to those who
prepare for it." "If you have built castles in the
air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be built. Now put
foundations under them." "One person living God's truth and
love will gradually become a lighthouse to all nearby." "Immature poets imitate; mature
poets steal." "Only two things are infinite, the
universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." "Too many pieces of music finish
too long after the end."
PAGE SEVEN "I have a prodigious quantity of
mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up." "A committee is a group of
important individuals who singly can do nothing but who can together agree that
nothing can be done." "My grandmother started walking
five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now and we don't know
where the hell she is." "Not many have seen the Savior,
but [all] of you [have] received the gift of the Holy Ghost." "I never did a day's work in my
lifeit
was all fun." "Car qui de sentiment non fait "Promise yourself success at the
beginning of each day, and you'll be surprised how often things will turn out
that way."
PAGE EIGHT Music has always been interwoven with
my lifeso
much that I can hardly imagine the one without the other. I am not sure that
this is altogether a good thing, but it is too late now to change." "Pay no attention to what the
critics say; there has never been a statue set up in honor of a critic." "I am sure my music has a taste of
codfish in it." "Know how to listen, and you will
profit even from those who talk badly." "He who is not prepared today will
be less so tomorrow." "A man who seeks truth and loves
it must be reckoned precious to any human society." "All I have seen teaches me to
trust the Creator for all that I have not seen."
PAGE NINE "What would be the use of
immortality to a person who cannot use well a half hour?" "Every composer cannot expect to
have a worldwide message, but he may reasonably expect to have a special message
for his own people." "In order to make apple pie from
scratch, you must first create the universe." "Beethoven was ahead of the times,
Bach behind them." "To me, atonality is against
nature. There is a center to everything that exists. The planets have the sun,
the earth, the moon." "The armour of falsehood is subtly
wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own
soul."
PAGE TEN "The kingdom of music is not the
kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and
culture have alike rejected." "Discovery consists of seeing what
everybody else has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought." "Overstated planning is the
backbone of understated elegance." "Don't be afraid to take a big
step. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps." "Latina Sententia in libri capite
elegantissima est." "O God, help us to be masters of
ourselves that we may be servants of others." "The greatest gift we can give
another is the gift of a good example."
PAGE ELEVEN "What you are is God's gift to
you; what you do with yourself is your gift to God." "I do not regret the journey; we
took risks, we know we took them, things have come out against us, therefore we
have no cause for complaint." "A single day is sufficient for a
man to discover what happiness is." "When love is so strong on both
sides, it can no longer be measured." "Happiness is a butterfly, which,
when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down
quietly, may alight upon you." "There is nothing that steals
man's time, his talents, his vigor, his energy, even his prospects of salvation,
in greater degree than the crime of procrastination." "Reason is true to itself;
PAGE TWELVE "God can only be comprehended as
Love." "There are two means of refuge
from the miseries of life: music and cats." "The superior person tries to
promote music as a means to the perfection of human culture. When such music
previals, and people's minds are led towards the right ideals and aspirations,
we may see the appearance of a great nation." "The only religious opinion I am
sure of is this: self-awareness is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping
together!" "A man who wants to lead the
orchestra must turn his back on the crowd." "Te audire non possum: Musa
sapientum fixa est in aure."
PAGE THIRTEEN "Time is the stuff life is made
of." "Do the thing and you will have
the power." "It is amazing how much you can
accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit." "The immense value of becoming
acquainted with a foreign language is that we are thereby led into a new world
of tradition and thought and feeling." "Happiness is not a state to
arrive at, but a manner of traveling." "The one-l lama, "I've always thought that a
feeling which changes never existed in the first place."
PAGE FOURTEEN "Human affairs would be far
happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak. But ...
men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues." "When we have done good
ninety-nine times and then do an evil, how common it is ... to look at that one
evil all the day long and never think of the good." "But of course it never hurts to
read eleven lines of Shakespeare." "If we will be guided by wisdom,
our judgment will be corrected, and we will find that we can improve very
much." "But do you know what I had to go
through to get to that C major?" "The only true gifts are a portion
of yourself." "Education is a continual process
of revision."
PAGE FIFTEEN "I, who am and have always been a
true lover of those who delight to know true intelligence, and even more of
those who are not without reason, will set about to discuss a few small matters
not displeasing to the desirous with as much brevity as I can." "Ultimately, we can do only what
we are constituted to do: whether we do it well or not is what really mattersand
contact with durable human instincts is more vital than tagging onto
fashions." "Significant problems we face
cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created
them." "With music, you can create
instant trust with an audience. You can hear three notes, and you surrender to
it, whereas it takes you about ten minutes of language before people begin to
trust you in a play." "Not a life lost, and we have been
through Hell."
PAGE SIXTEEN "I don't want an ornament dangling
from my branches.... I want another tree to share its roots, stand tall and rest
stoically at my side." "There is no room in music for the
second-rateit
might just as well be the nineteenth-rate." "For all the compasses in the
world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure." "He tried not to let his mind
wander nor to let his impression of the music be marred by looking at the
white-tied conductor's arm-waving, which always so unpleasantly distracts one's
attention from the music." "Taking a political point of view
for me is more than emotions, it is reason, analysis, strategy. I think that one
must think very carefully and thoroughly about one's methods." "Art is a lie that makes us
realize the truth."
PAGE SEVENTEEN "The yellow cow flies at
midnight." "I have never been able to make up
my mind as to what was my true callingthat
of composer, pianist, or conductor.... I am constantly troubled by the misgiving
that, in venturing into too many fields, I may have failed to make the best use
of my life." "Everything is more glamorous when
you do it in bed, anyway. Even peeling potatoes." "Tolerance is not best learned in
a closet." "Of all sexual aberrations,
chastity is the strangest." "To compose Stabat Mater is, after
all, better than to know Latin." "For Hell is just as properly
proper
PAGE EIGHTEEN "Just listen to the music and
leave me alone." "For me at the moment the symphony
is just as open a form as Consequens III or Dithyrambe VIIb. It is a neutral
title suggesting a certain austerity which appeals to meparticularly
in such a linear piece as this one." "If nothing we do matters, then
all that matters is what we do." "Anyone who doesn't believe in
aliens should take a good, close look at a chicken." "If you can't summer in Paris, the
least you can do is sing Monty Python." "Listening to the Fifth Symphony
of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for forty-five minutes." "No, a symphony must be like the
world. It must embrace everything."
PAGE NINETEEN "Ah, music. A magic beyond all we
do here!" "The umpire called him out, so I
guess he's out." "Singing should be joy. Music
should be joy." "If you want the dove to descend,
you've got to clean the cage." "Auditing is dullor
damned well ought to be." "Most of the time, I'm just
satisfied with my best." "You know, sometimes we're lucky
to be musicians." "Without
change, there is no art." "Your
dissertation will be shit. My dissertation was shit. All dissertations are shit.
Get it done." PAGE TWENTY "Solutions nearly always come from
the direction you least expect, which means there's no point trying to look in
that direction because it won't be coming from there." "I
don't believe in tampering with any young writer's material, especially when
that young writer was once myself." "The
world is made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness." "If
every high-school-age student had the opportunity to participate in a Model
United Nations conference, that would be the most peace-loving generation in the
history of the planet." "Dharma,
men don't swap cute stories about sexual inadequacy." "I
remember cities by their skylines at night." "There
is comfort in otherness." PAGE TWENTY-ONE "Youth cannot know how age thinks
and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young." "Never desert your own line of
talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed." "I
know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to
the things you want to happen." "I'm
sorry to have gone on at such length, but if any thought I have thrown out can
help to make the world a more cheerful place I should be very happy." "Bravery
is being the only one who knows you're afraid." "Is
that Gene Wilder? No, it's Bette Davis." PAGE TWENTY-TWO "Victory awaits him who has
everything in order." "Do
not worry about your difficulties in mathematics: I can assure you that mine are
still greater." "The
best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is
today." "I
know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received." "Art should spark discussion and
spark imagination and challenge beyond the easy-listening experience." "I'm 30. The apprenticeship is over. Do it. Do
it all!" "Excel can do a lot of things, but it can't
purify water." "Nothing says Valentine's Day better than a bald
damsel." PAGE TWENTY-THREE "The best guarantee for our own progress is the
progress of others." "Learning without thought is labor lost; thought
without learning is perilous." "Cheer up. Life isn't everything." "There is no greater provincialism than that
special form of sophistication and arrogance which denies the past." "I feel a little tired, but what the hell. That
just means I get to sleep." "I don't want to think about anything, except to
become language." "I'm only very loosely based in reality." "There are only two types of people in the
world: those who have lost data and those who will." PAGE TWENTY-FOUR "He died of sick." "Generally, bricks on your head hurt." "I will not rest until every year families
gather to spend December 25th together at Osama's Homobortion Pot-n-Commie
Jizzporium." "Don't pay too much attention to the sounds, or
you might miss the music." "Great enterprises can fail
but they fail twice over if they take away our moral courage and prevent us
from rising to the next challenge." "I thought you were strangely quiet on V-E Day." "If the bird is not happy, it does not sing." PAGE TWENTY-FIVE "A comedian is not a man who says funny things.
A comedian is one who says things funny." "Strategic planning comes from headquarters
down. I don't think there was any mal-intent or idea of exclusion." "Speaking about music is like dancing about
nuclear physics." "If you love something but choose not to do it
professionally, it's not a waste. Because, you know, you still have it. You have
it forever." "Logic without a moral underpinning
is just a mind-game." "Time spent watching a cat is not
deducted from your span on Earth." PAGE TWENTY-SIX "[Marcel] Marceau passed away quietly on September 22, 2007. He
had no last words." "History is the set of questions we
in the present ask in the past." "After a while you just have to face
the fact that you'll probably never reread Das Kapital." "It's really hard to show a trend
with one data point." "Trade hurts some people, but helps
many more. It raises overall income and allows Americans to buy a
wider range of better goods more cheaply." "The greatest artists were never men
of taste." "We hate each other cordially." PAGE TWENTY-SEVEN "All my life I have been told that
my standard was too high, and urged to make it more popular. But
now, I am not only to be given every facility to create the highest
standard, but am even told that I will be held responsible
for keeping it so! I have to shake myself to realize it." "There is a great strength and a
great satisfaction in being a specialist." "If you can play music and survive
and be paid for it, that's fairly cool." "But that's the thing about
visionaries. They don't imagine what's easy. They imagine the
benefits to be reaped once all the obstacles are overcome." "It doesn't matter if his proposal
is less than perfect, or can't be realized within ten years, or even
if it is found to be deeply flawed. The goal is the thing." PAGE TWENTY-EIGHT "However good your geometry is as a conductor, unless you have
the spirit of the music inside you, it's worth nothing." "A lifelong procrastinator,
[Puccini] could compose only during frenzied all-nighters, tanked up
on coffee and cigarettes."
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