Great Throughts Treasury

"To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable."

"A musical idea is not the same as a piece of music. It only induces a piece of music."

"The simplest way of listening to music is to listen for the sheer pleasure of the musical sound itself."

"In the musical field there appears to be an unquenchable thirst for the familiar, and very little curiosity as to what the newer composers are up to."

"If you want to understand music better, you can do nothing more important than to listen to it."

"The greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music."

"Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of sub-consciousness - I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness."