Ben Connolly

“Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather another chaos, that it created in us. Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Society--civilized society, at least--is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“The Yirkalla aborigines of Arnhem Land in Australia hear sacred song words in the babbling of babies. To them, songs are never composed but only discovered: all songs exist already.”
― Philip Ball, The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't Do Without It

“In historical events (where the subject of observation is the actions of people), the most primordial approximation appears as the will of the gods, then as the will of those people who stand in the most conspicuous historical place—the historical heroes. But we need only enquire into the essence of any historical event, that is, into the activity of the entire mass of people who took part in the event, to become convinced that the will of the historical hero not only does not guide the actions of the masses, but is itself constantly guided.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace