Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Claude Levi-Strauss

Music is a language by whose means messages are elaborated, that such messages can be understood by the many but sent out only by few, and that it alone among all the languages unites the contradictory character of being at once intelligible and untranslatable - these facts make the creator of music a being like the gods.

Character | Language | Means | Music | Wisdom |

Walter Lippmann

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

Music | Nothing | Wisdom | Understand |

Douglas Meador

Great music is a flame that lights the tapers of man's noblest thoughts and drives shadows from the corridors of his soul.

Man | Music | Soul | Wisdom |

Felix Mendelssohn, fully Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

It's not that music is too imprecise for words, but too precise.

Music | Wisdom | Words |

Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL

Geometry gives us the sense of equality produced by proportion. It also heals by means of fine music all that is harsh and inharmonious or discordant in the soul, under the influence of rhythm, meter and melody.

Equality | Influence | Means | Melody | Music | Sense | Soul | Wisdom |

Margaret Percival

Night steals on; and the day takes its farewell, like the words of a departing friend, or the last tone of hallowed music in a minister’s aisles, heard when it floats along the shade of elms; in the still place of graves.

Day | Friend | Music | Wisdom | Words |

John Rossel

Music is the heartbeat of the universe. It reaches into the outer ramparts of eternity where time and space are nonexistent; it touches the stars and is reflected in the beauty of the galaxy. It is exemplified in the mathematical precision found in the largest star and the tiniest molecule. Music is emotional. It touches the heart and creates a response within the listener without his being aware of the technique.

Beauty | Eternity | Heart | Music | Precision | Space | Time | Universe | Wisdom | Precision | Beauty |

Dominique Ricard

It is in learning music that many youthful hearts learn to love.

Learning | Love | Music | Wisdom | Learn |

Clara Kathleen Rogers

Singing is the highest expression of music because it is the most direct expression of the emotions of the soul.

Emotions | Music | Soul | Wisdom |

Russell Schweikart, fully Russell Louis "Rusty" Schweickart aka Schweikart

[The earth] is so small and so fragile and such a precious little spot in that universe that you can block it out with your thumb, and you realize that on that small spot, that little blue and white thing, is everything that means anything to you - all of history and music and poetry and art and death and birth and love.

Art | Birth | Death | Earth | History | Little | Love | Means | Music | Poetry | Universe | Wisdom | Art |

Friedrich Schelling, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von

Architecture is music in space as it were a frozen music.

Music | Space | Wisdom |

Ravi Shankar, born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury, aka Pandit

Our tradition teaches us that sound is God - Nada Brahma. The highest aim of our music is to reveal the essence of the universe it reflects.

God | Music | Sound | Tradition | Universe | Wisdom | God |

Tao Ho

Good architecture is like a piece of beautifully composed music crystallized in space that elevates our spirits beyond the limit of time.

Good | Music | Space | Time | Wisdom |

Thomas De Witt Talmage

The costliest thing on earth is the drunkard’s song. It costs ruin of body. It costs ruin of mind...The costliest thing on earth is sin. The most expensive of all music is the Song of the Drunkards. It is the highest tariff of nations - not a protective tariff, but a tariff of doom, a tariff of woe, an tariff of death.

Body | Death | Earth | Mind | Music | Nations | Sin | Wisdom | Woe |

Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne

Both music and painting add a spirit to devotion, and elevate the ardor.

Devotion | Music | Spirit | Wisdom |

Igor Feodorovitch Stravinsky, or Fyodorovich

Music is, but its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all... music expresses itself.

Music | Nature | Wisdom |

Igor Feodorovitch Stravinsky, or Fyodorovich

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music; they should be taught to love it instead.

Appreciation | Love | Music | People | Respect | Wisdom | Appreciation | Respect | Trouble |

Jeremy Taylor

It is not the eye, that sees the beauty of the heaven, nor the ear, that hears the sweetness of music or the glad tidings of a prosperous accident, but the soul, that perceives all the relishes of sensual and intellectual perfections; and the more noble and excellent the soul is, the greater and more savory are its perceptions.

Accident | Beauty | Heaven | Music | Soul | Wisdom | Beauty |