David > David's Quotes

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Joy, sorrow, tears, lamentation, laughter -- to all these music gives voice, but in such a way that we are transported from the world of unrest to a world of peace, and see reality in a new way, as if we were sitting by a mountain lake and contemplating hills and woods and clouds in the tranquil and fathomless water.”
― Albert Schweitzer

“Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.”
― Ludwig van Beethoven

“It seemed unthinkable for me to leave the world forever before I had produced all that I felt called upon to produce”
― Ludwig van Beethoven

“Music is ... A higher revelation than all Wisdom & Philosophy”
― Ludwig van Beethoven

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
― Aldous Huxley, Music at Night and Other Essays

“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.”
― Albert Einstein

“If you stand up and be counted, from time to time you may get yourself knocked down. But remember this: A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good.”
― Thomas J. Watson

“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”
― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

“I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.”
― E.B. White

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
― W.B. Yeats

“Beethoven tells you what it's like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it's like to be human. Bach tells you what it's like to be the universe.”
― Douglas Adams

“It is true that many creative people fail to make mature personal relationships, and some are extremely isolated. It is also true that, in some instances, trauma, in the shape of early separation or bereavement, has steered the potentially creative person toward developing aspects of his personality which can find fulfillment in comparative isolation. But this does not mean that solitary, creative pursuits are themselves pathological....
[A]voidance behavior is a response designed to protect the infant from behavioural disorganization. If we transfer this concept to adult life, we can see that an avoidant infant might very well develop into a person whose principal need was to find some kind of meaning and order in life which was not entirely, or even chiefly, dependent upon interpersonal relationships.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self

“Some split between the inner world and outer world is common to all behaviour, and the need to bridge the gap is the source of creative behaviour.”
― Anthony Storr

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
― William Butler Yeats

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“Good men and bad men alike are capable of weakness. The difference is simply that a bad man will be proud all his life of one good deed - while an honest man is hardly aware of his good acts, but remembers a single sin for years on end.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate