Quotes by Philosophers - Page 259

Man's delight in the Lord is the absolute peak of human triumph. He praises God when full of joy, and when not, he praises God to become full of joy. For to know and to live as though God is worthy of all praise, in all one's circumstances, whether seemingly good or seemingly bad, is the primary definition of joy and the richest triumph for man under God.
Criss Jami
Every category has its snobs: music, books, movies. There are so many things a man is only pressured into liking or disliking.
Criss Jami
The ear favours no particular “point of view.”We are enveloped by sound.It forms a seamless web around us.We say, “Music shall fill the air.” We never say, “Music shall fill a particular segment of the air.”We hear sounds from everywhere, without ever having to focus. Sounds come from “above,” from “below,” from in “front” of us, from “behind” us, from our “right,” from our “left.”We can‘t shut out sound automatically. We simply are not equipped with earlids.Where a visual space is an organised continuum of a uniformed connected kind, the ear world is a world of simultaneous relationships.
Marshall McLuhan
Genius is when you strike a chord accidently, and the ensuing music is beyond your control
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Music is essentially useless, as life is.
George Santayana
The dance is the silent partner of music and participates in a division of labor: music presents a stylized version of man’s consciousness in action—the dance presents a stylized version of man’s body in action.
Ayn Rand
If there is anyone who owes everything to Bach, it is certainly God.
Emil M. Cioran
....harmony that would fittingly imitate the utterances and accents of a brave man who is engaged in warfare or in any enforced business, and who, when he has failed […] confronts fortune with steadfast endurance and repels her strokes
Plato
O friends, no more these sounds!Let us sing more cheerful songs, more full of joy!
Friedrich Schiller
Music, that is the science or the sense of proper modulation, is likewise given by God's generosity to mortals having rational souls in order to lead them to higher things.
Augustine of Hippo
You can’t really think hard about what you’re doing and listen to the radio at the same time. Maybe they didn’t see their job as having anything to do with hard thought, just wrench twiddling.
Robert M. Pirsig
If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This is always exhilarating and sublime.
Henry David Thoreau
How can the feeling man resist feeling, the loving one love? Who has not experienced the overwhelming power of melody? And what else is melody but the power of feeling? Music is the language of feeling; … feeling communicates itself. … Is it man that possesses love, or is it not … love that possesses man? When love impels a man to suffer death even joyfully for the beloved one, is this death-conquering power his own individual power, or is it not rather the power of love?
Ludwig Feuerbach
Life exists for the love of music or beautiful things.
G.K. Chesterton
Once you have heard the Indian Bamboo flute then everything else is just ordinary!
Osho
Music heals all forms of misery
Friedrich Nietzsche
Does not… the ear of Handel predict the witchcraft of harmonic sound?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
They [the critics] deal with Schoenberg’s early works and all their wealth by classifying them, with the music-historical cliché, as late romantic post-Wagnerian. One might just as well dispose of Beethoven as a late-classicist post-Haydnerian.
Theodor W. Adorno
Music conveys to us itself!
Ludwig Wittgenstein
nothing is accomplished by writing a piece of musicnothing is accomplished by hearing a piece of musicnothing is accomplished by playing a piece of musicour ears are now in excellent condition.
John Cage
When it happens that I am more moved by the song than the thing which is sung, I confess that I sin in a manner deserving punishment
Augustine of Hippo
Here are all these people, full of heartache or hatred or desire, and we all have our troubles and the school year is filled with vulgarity and triviality and consequence, and there are all these teachers and kids of every shape and size, and there's this life we're struggling through full of shouting and tears and fights and break-ups and dashed hopes and unexpected luck -- it all disappears, just like that, when the choir begins to sing. Everyday life vanishes into song, you are suddenly overcome with a feeling of brotherhood, of deep solidarity, even love, and it diffuses the ugliness of everyday life into a spirit of perfect communion.
Muriel Barbery
What is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of a paradox: a purposeful purposeless or a purposeless play. This play, however, is an affirmation of life--not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.
John Cage
What can a man do with music who is not benevolent?
Confucius
Yet, for my part, I was never usually squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary. I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the same reason that I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater’s heaven. I would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness. I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fail when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America. Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?
Henry David Thoreau
I'm a bluesman moving through a blues-soaked America, a blues-soaked world, a planet where catastrophe and celebration- joy and pain sit side by side. The blues started off in some field, some plantation, in some mind, in some imagination, in some heart. The blues blew over to the next plantation, and then the next state. The blues went south to north, got electrified and even sanctified. The blues got mixed up with jazz and gospel and rock and roll.
Cornel West
Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?Are the people inside the school musical and the ones outside unmusical?What if the ones inside can't hear very well, would that change my question?
John Cage
I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning
Plato
If one should desire to know whether a kingdom is well governed, if its morals are good or bad, the quality of its music will furnish the answer.
Confucius
No wealth can ever make a bad man at peace with himself
Plato
The emotions - love, mirth, the heroic, wonder, tranquility, fear, anger, sorrow, disgust - are in the audience.
John Cage
Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.
Thomas Carlyle
He had always wanted to write music, and he could give no other identity to the thing he sought. If you want to know what it is, he told himself, listen to the first phrases of Tchaikovsky’s First Concerto--or the last movement of Rachmaninoff’s Second. Men have not found the words for it, nor the deed nor the thought, but they have found the music. Let me see that in one single act of man on earth. Let me see it made real. Let me see the answer to the promise of that music. Not servants nor those served; not altars and immolations; but the final, the fulfilled, innocent of pain. Don’t help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because I need it. Don’t work for my happiness, my brothers--show me yours--show me that it is possible--show me your achievement--and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.
Ayn Rand
At a certain place in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, for example, he might feel that he is floating above the earth in a starry dome, with the dream of immortality in his heart; all the stars seem to glimmer around him, and the earth seems to sink ever deeper downwards.
Friedrich Nietzsche
In music the passions enjoy themselves.
Friedrich Nietzsche
She sat listening to the music. It was a symphony of triumph. The notes flowed up, they spoke of rising and they were the rising itself, they were the essence and the form of upward motion, they seemed to embody every human act and thought that had ascent as its motive. It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and spreading open. It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It swept space clean, and left nothing but the joy of an unobstructed effort. Only a faint echo within the sounds spoke of that from which the music had escaped, but spoke in laughing astonishment at the discovery that there was no ugliness or pain, and there never had to be. It was the song of an immense deliverance.
Ayn Rand
If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.
John Cage
Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them.
Plato
Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
G.K. Chesterton
Music is the moonlight in the gloomy night of life.
Jean Paul Friedrich Richter
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 in the soul can be heard by the universe.
Lao Tzu
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
Friedrich Nietzsche
We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.
Friedrich Nietzsche
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
Aldous Huxley
You may have read or heard about the so-called positive thinkers of the West. They sayjust the opposite -- they don't know what they are saying. They say, "When you breatheout, throw out all your misery and negativity; and when you breathe in, breathe in joy,positivity, happiness, cheerfulness."Atisha's method is just the opposite: when you breathe in, breathe in all the misery andsuffering of all the beings of the world -- past, present and future. And when you breatheout, breathe out all the joy that you have, all the blissfulness that you have, all thebenediction that you have. Breathe out, pour yourself into existence. This is the methodof compassion: drink in all the suffering and pour out all the blessings.And you will be surprised if you do it. The moment you take all the sufferings of theworld inside you, they are no longer sufferings. The heart immediately transforms theenergy. The heart is a transforming force: drink in misery, and it is transformed intoblissfulness... then pour it out.Once you have learned that your heart can do this magic, this miracle, you would like todo it again and again. Try it. It is one of the most practical methods -- simple, and itbrings immediate results. Do it today, and see.That is one of the approaches of Buddha and all his disciples. Atisha is one of hisdisciples, in the same tradition, in the same line. Buddha says again and again to hisdisciples, "IHI PASSIKO: come and see!" They are very scientific people. Buddhism isthe most scientific religion on the earth; hence, Buddhism is gaining more and moreground in the world every day. As the world becomes more intelligent, Buddha willbecome more and more important. It is bound to be so. As more and more people come toknow about science, Buddha will have great appeal, because he will convince thescientific mind -- because he says, "Whatsoever I am saying can be practiced." And Idon't say to you, "Believe it," I say, "Experiment with it, experience it, and only then ifyou feel it yourself, trust it. Otherwise there is no need to believe.
Osho
You'll never cross an emotional bridge, if you keep rushing back to the other side.
T.F. Hodge
Loneliness makes us more capable of true intimacy if ever better opportunities do come along. We might be isolated for now, but we'll be capable of far closer, more interesting bonds with anyone we do eventually locate. 
Alain de Botton
A fundamental truth, is that there is simply no such thing as an inherently boring person or thing. People are only in danger of coming across as such when they either fail to understand their deeper selves or don’t dare or know how to communicate them to others. 
Alain de Botton
Every day you have a new chapter to write about your journey of life. As you write that chapter, do it so well such that when others read it; you would still be proud of yourself.
Gift Gugu Mona
Remember, it is ultimately your mind which makes anything attractive or unattractive. It is you who is the deciding factor.
Osho
The wounding becomes sacred when we are willing to release our old stories and to become the vehicles through which the new story may emerge into time.
Jean Houston
The first step in awareness is to be watchful of your body. Slowly,slowly one becomes alert about each gesture,each movement. And as you become aware, a miracle starts happening: many things that you used to do before simply disappear. Your body becomes more relaxed,your body becomes more attuned, a deep peace starts prevailing even in your body, a subtle music pulsates in your body.
Osho
And all are asleep,so all are foolish. Don't feel offended. Thefacts have to be stated as they are.You function in sleep; that's why you go on stumbling,you go on doing things you don't want to do, you go on doing things you have decided not to do. You go on doing things you know are not right to do, and you don't do things that you know are right. How is this possible? Why can't you walk straight? Why do you go on getting trapped into bypaths? Why do you go on going astray? This is what is happening. Watch your life--everything that you go on demanding is so confused and so confusiing. You are not alert. You can't see, you can't heart-- certainly you have ears so you can hear, but there is nobody inside to understand it. Certainly you have eyes so you can see,but there is nobody present inside. So your eyes go on seeing and your ears go on listening, but nothing is understood. And on each step you stumble, on each step you commit something wrong. And still you go on believing that you are aware.
Osho
The quickest way to stop noticing something, may be to buy it—just as the quickest way to stop appreciating someone may be to marry him or her.
Alain de Botton
Never advise a man against his wife or a wife against his husband. When they come together again you will be the archenemy. When they separate, the fault will all be yours
Bangambiki Habyarimana
When a man marries, it's proof he can't govern his life. He needs a governess
Bangambiki Habyarimana
A man should not compete with his wife in talk but in silence
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Married life is not for the faint hearted. Sometimes it can look like an ugly battlefield
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Sometimes divorce is the best thing that can happen to marriage
Bangambiki Habyarimana