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

Aaron Copland

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

Better | Important | Music | Nothing | Understand |

Aaron Copland

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

Music | Time |

Aaron Copland

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

Listening | Music | Pleasure | Sound |

Aristotle NULL

When men hear imitations, even apart from the rhythms and tunes themselves, their feelings move in sympathy. Since then music is a pleasure, and virtue consists in rejoicing and loving and hating aright, there is clearly nothing which we are so much concerned to acquire and to cultivate as the power of forming right judgments and of taking delight in good dispositions and noble actions. Rhythm and melody supply imitations of anger and gentleness, and also of courage and temperance, and of all the qualities contrary to these, and of the other qualities of character, which hardly fall short of the actual affections, as we know form our own experience, for in listening to such strains our souls undergo a change. The habit of feeling pleasure or pain at mere representation is not far removed from the same feeling about realities.

Anger | Change | Character | Courage | Experience | Feelings | Gentleness | Good | Habit | Listening | Melody | Men | Music | Nothing | Pain | Pleasure | Power | Qualities | Right | Sympathy | Virtue | Virtue |

Author Unknown NULL

It is easier to understand a nation by listening to its music than by learning its language.

Language | Learning | Listening | Music | Understand |

Author Unknown NULL

Take time to laugh, it is the music of the soul. Take time to think, it is the source of power. Take time to play, it is the source of perpetual youth. Take time to read, it is the fountain of wisdom. Take time to pray, it is the greatest power on earth. Take time to love and be loved, it is a God-given privilege. Take time to be friendly, it is the road to happiness. Take time to give, it is too short a day to be selfish. Take time to work, it is the price of success.

Day | Earth | God | Love | Music | Play | Power | Price | Soul | Success | Time | Wisdom | Work | Youth |

Author Unknown NULL

Take time to laugh, it is the music of the soul.

Music | Soul | Time |

Charles Dickens, fully Charles John Huffam Dickens

Ye men of gloom and austerity, who paint the face of Infinite Benevolence with an eternal frown, read in the everlasting book, wide open to your view, the lesson it would teach. Its pictures are not in black and somber hues, but bright and glowing tints; its music - save when ye drown it - is not in sights and groans, but songs and cheerful sounds. Listen to the million voices in the summer air, and find one dismal as your own.

Benevolence | Eternal | Gloom | Lesson | Men | Music | Teach |

Charles Caleb Colton

Conversation is the music of the mind, an intellectual orchestra, where all the instruments should bear a part, but where none should play together. Each of the performers should have a just appreciation of his own powers, otherwise an unskillful novice who might usurp the first fiddle, would infallibly get into a scrape. To prevent these mistakes, a good master of the band will be very particular in the assortment of the performers; if too dissimilar, there will be no harmony, if too few, there will be no variety; and, if too numerous, there will be no order, for the presumption of one prater, might silence the eloquence of a Burke, or the wit of a Sheridan, as a single kettle-drum would drown the finest solo of a Gionowich or a Jordini.

Appreciation | Conversation | Good | Harmony | Mind | Music | Order | Play | Presumption | Silence | Will | Wit | Appreciation |

Chuang Tzu, also spelled Chuang-tsze, Chuang Chou, Zhuangzi, Zhuang Tze, Zhuang Zhou, Chuang Tsu, Chouang-Dsi, Chuang Tse, or Chuangtze

Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature.

Charity | Devotion | Man | Mind | Music | Nature |

Charles Henry Parkhurst

There is always the possibility of beauty where there is an unsealed human eye; of music where there is an unstopped human ear; and of inspiration where there is a receptive human spirit.

Beauty | Inspiration | Music | Spirit | Beauty |

Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

Music expresses the harmony of the universe, while rituals express the order of the universe. Through harmony all things are influenced, and through order all things have a proper place. When rituals and music are well established, we have the Heaven and Earth functioning in perfect order.

Earth | Harmony | Heaven | Music | Order | Universe |

Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

The noble person tries to create harmony in the human heart by a rediscovery of human nature, and tries to promote music as a means to the perfection of human culture. When such music prevails and the people’s minds are led toward the right ideas and aspirations, we may see the appearance of a great nation. Character is the backbone of our human nature, and music is the flowing of character... The poem gives expression to our heart, the song gives expression to our voice, and the dance gives expression to our movements. these three arts take their rise from the human soul, and then are given further expressions by means of musical instruments.

Appearance | Character | Culture | Harmony | Heart | Human nature | Ideas | Means | Music | Nature | People | Perfection | Right | Soul | Poem |

Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey

Let us not get so busy or live so fast that we can't listen to the music of the meadow or the symphony that glorifies the forest. Some things in the world are far more important than wealth; one of them is the ability to enjoy simple things.

Ability | Important | Music | Wealth | World |