Symphony Quotes

My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.

What is the universe? The universe is a symphony of vibrating strings.

..we are nothing but melodies. We are nothing but cosmic music played out on vibrating strings and membranes.

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.

If a professional musician in a symphony orchestra is playing Beethoven.

But this particular orchestra have played this particular chestnut so many times, they can play it in their sleep. Does the genius remain present in the music or not?

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.

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.

It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.

We are each but a quarter note in a grand symphony.

I have put my whole soul into this work [The Pathetique Symphony] .

. . You cannot imagine what joy I feel at the thought that my days are not yet over and that I may still accomplish much.

The human being holds a universe within, filled with overlapping frequencies, and the result is a symphony of cosmic proportions.

What is history? Its beginning is that of the centuries of systematic work devoted to the solution of the enigma of death, so that death itself may eventually be overcome. That is why people write symphonies, and why they discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves.

I grew up a Red Sox fan. I grew up going to Fenway Park and the Museum of Fine Arts and the Science Museum and Symphony Hall and going to the Common, walking around. My whole family at different times lived and worked in Boston.

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.

I would advise my young colleagues, the composers of symphonies, to drop in sometimes at the kindergarten, too. It is there that it is decided whether there will be anybody to understand their works in twenty years' time.

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

Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kowtow before any United States proconsul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony.

All the charming and beautiful things, from the Song of Songs, to bouillabaisse, and from the nine Beethoven symphonies to the Martini cocktail, have been given to humanity by men who, when the hour came, turned from tap water to something with color in it, and more in it than mere oxygen and hydrogen.

u201Che G-minor Symphony consists of eight remarkable measures surrounded by a half-hour of banality.

For hundreds of years people have talked about artists having inspiration, but often, some persons would say, write us a symphony or write us a song, on commission. The artists would come up with a masterpiece without waiting to have their muse inspire them.

Coming to understand a painting or a symphony in an unfamiliar style, to recognize the work of an artist or school, to see or hear in new ways, is as cognitive an achievement as learning to read or write or add.

You can chase a Beethoven symphony all your life and never catch up.

Revolution is only truly revolution if it is a continuous struggle-not just an external struggle against an enemy, but an inner struggle, fighting and subduing all negative aspects which hinder or do damage to the course of the revolution. In this light, revolution is ... a mighty symphony of victory over the enemy and over oneself.

When you hear a large symphony orchestra.

for instance, in a concert hall, there's a big, sweeping sound that just doesn't get on to a record.

History is a symphony of echoes heard and unheard. It is a poem with events as verses.

Yoga is like music: the rhythm of the body, the melody of the mind, and the harmony of the soul create the symphony of life.

Do something that will last and be beautiful.

It doesn't have to be a bridge-or a symphony or book or a business. It could be the look in the eye of a child you raise or a simple garden you tend. Do something that will last and be beautiful.

A human body can think thoughts, play a piano, kill germs, remove toxins, make a baby all at once. Once it's doing that your biological rhythms are actually mirroring the symphony of the universe because you have circadian rhythms, seasonal rhythms, tidal rhythms you know they mirror everything that is happening in the whole universe.

This is what I want in heaven... words to become notes and conversations to be symphonies.

To us who remain behind is left this day of memories.

Every year--in the full tide of spring, at the height of the symphony of flowers and love and life--there comes a pause, and through the silence we hear the lonely pipe of death.

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

For an instant God opens his door and His orchestra plays the Fifth Symphony.

A symphony is no joke.

I tried to resist his overtures, but he plied me with symphonies, quartets, chamber music, and cantatas.

Mendelssohn never wrote any Water Music.

However, he wrote the Scotch Symphony, which is even better, or at least stronger.