Symphony Quotes

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common - this is my symphony. ~ William Ellery Channing

We must realize our own talents and, having realized, accept them; and play on them like a symphony in which all other instruments are harmonized to make a better universe. ~ Jeane Dixon

You stimulate the neo-cortex, it produces a symphony. But it's not just a symphony of perception. It's a symphony of your universe. Your reality. ~ Henry Markram

Her graphite pencil scratches the thick paper and it is the soundtrack to my bliss. That, and her sound - dissonant, aching. Her breath and heartbeat and pulse are my new favorite symphony; I'm beginning to learn which notes will play when, and to interpret them. ~ Michelle Hodkin

A symphony is no joke. ~ Johannes Brahms

We do not overidentify with our jobs. We may take pride in our work, we may stay late and come in on weekends, but we recognize that we are not our job descriptions. The amateur, on the other hand, overidentifies with his avocation, his artistic aspiration. He defines himself by it. He is a musician, a painter, a playwright. Resistance loves this. Resistance knows that the amateur composer will never write his symphony because he is overly invested in its success and overterrified of its failure. The amateur takes it so seriously it paralyzes him. ~ Steven Pressfield

The transition from subject to observer was instantaneous, sensations, sights, and sounds changing from instruments of torment to a fascinating display of electronic signals. The spectra included thousands of frequencies, visual, audio and psi bands alike, each customized for a specific effect, a pseudo symphony for an audience of one. ~ Marcha A. Fox

Operating theaters are not nearly as popular as dramatic theaters, musical theaters, and movie theaters, and it is easy to see why. A dramatic theater is a large, dark room in which actors perform a play, and if you are in the audience, you can enjoy yourself by listening to the dialog and looking at the costumes. A musical theater is a large, dark room in which musicians preform a symphony, and if you are in the audience you can enjoy yourself by listening to the melodies and watching the conductor wave his little stick around. And a movie theater is a large, dark room in which a projectionist shows a film, and if you are in the audience, you can enjoy yourself by eating popcorn and gossiping about movie stars. But an operating theater is a large, dark room in which doctors preform medical procedures, and if you are in the audience, the best thing to do is to leave at once because there is never anything on display in an operating theater but pain, suffering and discomfort, and for this reason most operating theaters have been closed down or have been turned into restaurants. ~ Lemony Snicket

These emotions, this love, this fear, this gratitude, this relief, the grief – none of it really
exists. None of it has mass or location, none of it can be weighed or photographed. None of
these emotions last, none of them can be measured – except in that very moment when we're
feeling them. They're like music – once the notes are played, they disappear. They only exist
in that moment in time. Love isn't merely something we feel, it's something we create –
something we have to keep creating in each and every moment. It's a song we have to keep
playing.
Because we know it doesn't really exist. We can't hold it. We can't lock it away. We can't
insure it. It's just a melody we play on and on. Our own Songline. We can only go on playing
it, moment by moment, until we're all out of moments.
It seems sort of pointless, striving so hard for perfection in something that doesn't really
exist. But, my, what a symphony it is.
And it's funny really, because for something that doesn't exist, it seems to be the only
thing that human beings never run out of. As long as we have faith in its magic, love is the
only thing that lasts. ~ Sarah MacManus

Design. Story. Symphony. Empathy. Play. Meaning. These six senses increasingly will guide our lives and shape our world. ~ Daniel H. Pink

When asked by a grumpily puzzled professor what "rules" he followed, Debussy is said to have retorted, mon plaisir "whatever I please" and he further claimed that more was to be gained by watching the sun rise than by listening to the Pastoral Symphony. Although such remarks were intended to shock, they contain a core of Debussyan verity ... ~ Claude Debussy

Antarctic symphony has a geometric relationship to the landscape. It's saying that this landscape and the minimal kind of, you know I'm talking like seeing ice, is visually kind of eerily minimal. ~ DJ Spooky

He knew Kandinsky by heart: every trickle of red, slash of black ink, and hemorrhage of gold. Each dissonant note in its allegro, the harmony in its adagio, and its deep blue intermezzo, formed a symphony he had memorized in his body. He couldn't say if Fragment 2 symbolized the Deluge, the Last Judgment, or the Resurrection. But it had become his religion, offering both redemption and pain.. ~ Kelly Oliver

Resistance knows that the amateur composer will never write his symphony because he is overly invested in its success and overterrified of its failure. ~ Steven Pressfield

The room, as she saw it, was a web of motion, a symphony of mischievou dancing particles quite like the smooth and placid notes of a fine concerto. ~ Mark Helprin

Just like the movements in a symphony, the rain sent vibrations through his body, painting the world in a physical map of mountains, valleys and high peaks dropping into deep ravines. The physical structures were all created by sound itself, and the colors were intense and vivid - substance created by sound, by feeling. ~ Christine Feehan

Perfection: a collection of a variety of pieces that, when viewed and felt individually, are difficult and confusing; but when brought together as one, create a perfect picture. Symphony, harmony, serenity. ~ C. JoyBell C.

And what, then, is belief? It is the demi-cadence which closes a musical phrase in the symphony of our intellectual life. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

I don't think I would ever write a book with what anybody could call pornography in it, because I feel that pornography is a cheat. It is an attempt to provide sexual experience by secondhand means. Now sex is a thing which has to be experienced firsthand, if you are really going to understand it, and pornography is rather like trying to find out about a Beethoven symphony by having somebody tell you about it and perhaps hum a few bars. It's not the same thing. Sex is primarily a question of relationships. Pornography is a do-it-yourself kit
a twenty-second best. ~ Robertson Davies

Mozart, striving for perfection, wrote the same symphony forty-one times. In his case, it worked. He wrote a perfect symphony. ~ Edward Abbey

It took me the bulk of my twenties to write one book about a family of alligator wrestlers. Whereas somebody like Steve Martin is releasing his latest banjo symphony, having just completed another movie and acclaimed, best-selling novel. ~ Karen Russell

One athlete does not make a team.
One singer does not make a band.
One actor does not make an ensemble.
One participant does not make a contest.
One employee does not make a company.

One stroke does not make a portrait.
One word does not make an essay.
One paragraph does not make a thesis.
One note does not make a symphony.
One instrument does not make an orchestra.

One finger does not make a hand.
One toe does not make a foot.
One lip does not make a voice.
One member does not make a body.
One cell does not make a being.

One memory does not make an experience.
One habit does not make a character.
One act does not make a destiny.
One day does not make a year.
One moment does not make a lifetime.

One man does not make a family.
One home does not make a neighborhood.
One clan does not make nation.
One tribe does not make a continent.
One people does not make a world. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

It had been years since Melora listened to a symphony. She had been struck by how natural and organic the music was. She found herself thinking about how the instruments were all human powered - not one electrical impulse among them. Maybe that was why it was so easy to get transported by the music - to find oneself thinking about vast outdoor landscapes when the music played. ~ Marie Zhuikov

Duke Ellington's career traces the entire history of jazz. The repertoire associated with him contains the most important elements in the music and provides concrete examples of some of the best ways to present the music in the widest variety of settings-radio, TV, recordings, movies, concert halls, festivals, solo, small ensemble, big band, symphony orchestra, opera, Broadway shows ... You name it, he did it! ~ Billy Taylor

The critics say that Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony has no form. They are wrong; it has the form of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony. ~ Edward Abbey

If I have trust in Catholicism, it is because I find in it much more possibility than in any other religion for presenting the full symphony of humanity. The other religions have almost no fullness; they have but solo parts. Only Catholicism can present the full symphony. And unless there is in that symphony a part that corresponds to Japan ... it cannot be a true religion. ~ Shusaku Endo

God is discovered entirely through creation - the brilliance of a sunset, the powerful roar of a waterfall, the symphony of sounds you hear in the heart of the forest, or the vastness of space and its countless stars. God is the mastermind behind all matter - every earth shattering scientific discovery and mystery that is yet to be unraveled was dreamed and enacted by God. ~ Benjamin F Sullivan

I sometimes like to think of God as a great symphony and the various spiritual paths as instruments in an orchestra. The gift that you have is like music waiting to be played. You need only to find the instrument that will best bring it out. You alone can never play all the instruments, and your music might not find voice in all the instruments. All you can do is find the instrument that suits you best, play it as well as you can, and add your music to the great symphony of divine creation. ~ Kent Nerburn

I think one of the reasons it ended was that his eyes never lit up for me the way they did for classical music. I realize that in the long run I may not be as wonderful as a Brahms symphony but I think I'm good for a Haydn quintet. ~ Daniel Handler

No one had any idea, it turned out. None of the older Symphony members knew much about science, which was frankly maddening given how much time these people had had to look things up on the Internet before the world ended. ~ Emily St. John Mandel

Its like reproaching someone who has no ear for music because he's bored at a symphony concert. Is it fair to blame me because you ascribed to me qualities that I hadn't got? I never tried to deceive you by pretending I was anything I wasn't. I was just pretty and gay. You don't ask for a pearl necklace or a sable coat at a booth in a fair; you ask for a tin trumpet and a toy balloon. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Proceed with caution as you enter the symphony
Degrees of punishment increase intensely. ~ Masta Killa

The next day, when I came home from the library, there was a small, used red record player in my room. I found my mother in the kitchen and spotted a bandage taped to her arm.
"Ma," I asked. "Where did you get the money for the record player?"
"I had it saved," she lied.
My father lived well, had a large house and an expensive imported car, wanted for little, and gave nothing. My mother lived on welfare in a slum and sold her blood to the Red Cross to get me a record player.
"Education is everything, Johnny," she said, as she headed for the refrigerator to get me food. "You get smart like regular people and you don't have to live like this no more."
She and I were not hugging types, but I put my hand on her shoulder as she washed the dishes with her back to me and she said, in best Brooklynese, "So go and enjoy, already." My father always said I was my mother's son and I was proud of that. On her good days, she was a good and noble thing to be a part of.
That evening, I plugged in the red record player and placed it by the window. My mother and I took the kitchen chairs out to the porch and listened to Beethoven's Sixth Symphony from beginning to end, as we watched the oil-stained waters of the Mad River roll by. It was a good night, another good night, one of many that have blessed my life. ~ John William Tuohy

4091 East Olympic Boulevard proved to be a nondescript one-storey sandstone building of the sort you drive blithely by every day, knowing it's full of paper-pushers and clock-watchers, and nobody's in there writing a symphony or taming a lion or having an orgasm. ~ James K. Morrow

I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don't think that's quite it; it's more like jazz. There is more improvisation. Someone once wrote that the sound of surprise is jazz, and if there's any one thing that we must try to get used to in this world, it's surprise and the unexpected. Truly, we are living in world where the only thing that's constant is change. ~ Warren G. Bennis

Congenital disease can warp the heart with great variety. Valves can be sealed tight, missing parts - or absent altogether. Major vessels can be misplaced, narrowed, or blocked completely. A chamber can be too small or missing, a wall too thick or thin. The heart's electrical system - its nerves - may go haywire. The muscle can be weak. Holes may occur almost anywhere, in almost any size. Studying heart pathology, one is reminded that the genetic symphony that produces a normal baby is indeed a wondrous and delicate one. ~ G. Wayne Miller

Hey - Duggie! Duggie! Duggie!" He came running up to me, sparkler in hand. I felt like sticking one on him, the cheeky bastard. Nobody called me Duggie.
He held the sparkler up in front of my face and said, "Wait. Wait."
I was already waiting. What else was there to do?
"Here you are," he said. "Look! What's this?"
At that precise moment, his sparkler fizzled out. I didn't say anything, so he supplied the answer himself. "The death of the socialist dream," he said.
He giggled like a little maniac, and stared at me for a second or two before running off, and in that time I saw exactly the same thing I'd seen in Stubbs's eyes the day before. The same triumphalism, the same excitement, not because something new was being created, but because something was being destroyed. I thought about Phillip and his stupid rock symphony and I swear that my eyes pricked with tears. This ludicrous attempt to squeeze the history of the countless millennia into half an hour's worth of crappy riffs and chord changes suddenly seemed no more Quixotic than all the things my dad and his colleagues had been working towards for so long. A national health service, free to everyone who needed it. Redistribution of wealth through taxation. Equality of opportunity. Beautiful ideas, Dad, noble aspirations, just as there was the kernel of something beautiful in Philip's musical hodge-podge. But it was never going to happen. If there had ever been a time when it might have happened, t ~ Jonathan Coe

The forecast was cloudy with extended periods of consciousness, followed by a stitch in my side and a sense of impending doom swelling to a symphony of demolition ~ Edward Morris

I hear the wind among the trees playing the celestial symphonies. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I've been playing music all my life, from being a choir soloist at Symphony Hall as a youngster to playing in bands through high school and college at Kent State. Went in the service at 17, out before I was 21. ~ Arthur Godfrey

The harmony of the universe knows only one musical form - the legato; while the symphony of number knows only its opposite - the staccato. All attempts to reconcile this discrepancy are based on the hope that an accelerated staccato may appear to our senses as a legato. ~ Tobias Dantzig

Dent recognized it; the intermezzo before the last movement of De Bruik's Human Biology. The finale of the symphony was a standard concert opener in the outer worlds. Soon the crackling of superamplified muscle contractions and the rush of adrenaline into the bloodstream announced the shift to the finale, and the crowd cheered wildly; Dent could feel his blood surging through him - ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

The Chicago Symphony is considered the greatest orchestra in the world. ~ Jane Byrne

Elgar's first symphony is the musical equivalent of St Pancras Railway Station. ~ Thomas Beecham

At breakfast, I might pass a Brahms symphony in my head. Then I am called to the phone, and half an hour later I find it's been going on all the time and I'm in the third movement. ~ Arthur Rubinstein

In string theory, all particles are vibrations on a tiny rubber band; physics is the harmonies on the string; chemistry is the melodies we play on vibrating strings; the universe is a symphony of strings, and the 'Mind of God' is cosmic music resonating in 11-dimensional hyperspace. ~ Michio Kaku

We did experiments with the Boston Symphony for many years where we measured the angles of incidence of sound arriving at the ears of the audience, then took the measurements back to MIT and analyzed them. ~ Amar Bose

Tanglewood [summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra] was a place where gods strode the earth. ~ Sarah Caldwell

A young man, just beginning the study of musical composition, once went to Mozart and asked him the formula for developing the theme of a symphony. Mozart suggested that a symphony was rather an ambitious project for a beginner: perhaps the young man might better try his hand at something simpler first. "But you were writing symphonies when you were my age." the student protested. "Yes, but I didn't have to ask how." ~ James Keller

You've been listening to the adagio from Beethoven's 7th Symphony. I think Ludwig pretty much summed up death in this one. You know, he had lost just about all his hearing when he wrote it, and I've often wondered if that didn't help him tune into the final silence of the great beyond. ~ Andrew Schneider

...when the Gods finished creating woman, they stood back and looked at what they'd done. They had given her a body strong enough to run a marathon, a mind fast enough to do six things at once, a heart big enough to love even while it was breaking, hands that could paint a masterpiece or feed a family or write a symphony. And they were afraid, because they saw that what they made was stronger than they were. They knew they had to create a secret weapon, one thing they could use to destroy her. So they gave her children. ~ Donna Ball

The object we call a book is not the real book, but its potential, like a musical score or seed. It exists fully only in the act of being read; and its real home is in the head of the reader, where the symphony resounds, the seed germinates.A book is a heart that beats in the chest of another. ~ Rebecca Solnit

I rail a lot against passion, because I feel like passion can be very exclusionary, and very elitist, and it can leave a lot of people feeling like they don't belong... I'm much more interested in allowing people to follow curiosity, which is a much more gentle impulse that doesn't require that you sacrifice your entire life for something. It's more of kind of a scavenger hunt, where you're allowed to pick up these tiny beautiful little clues along the pathway. It's more of a tap on the shoulder that asks you to turn your attention one inch to the left. Oh that's a little bit mildly interesting - what is that? Okay now I'm going to take that clue... I'm going to take it another inch, and I'm going to take it another inch. Rather than this idea that the symphony is born whole, because you sit down and you're struck by lightening and then you start to create. Curiosity I think, is a far more friendly way to do creativity than passion."

...this is why I say the path of curiosity is the scavenger hunt, because it took my probably three years between "gee it would be nice to put some plants in my backyard" to here I am in the South Pacific exploring the history of moss and inventing this giant novel. You know I think everybody thinks that creativity comes in lightening strikes, but I think it comes with whispers. And then the whispers can grow thunderous over time if you are patient enough to explore it, almost in the way that a scientist would.

Be open to - ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I was born, slipping on a symphony of broken melancholy; created of pencils and crayons; i was not supposed to be this way. i guess i am a "disappointment". i paint and draw. i like to write poetry. The things I excel at could fit inside my shoe." Excerpt from the poem,"Pain"written in 1995, by E.H. Cato(my maiden name) featured in Volume 2 of the Rantings & Ravings Series, 2013. ~ Emily H. Sturgill

The symphonies are the things that, as a soloist, I've not gotten to play. I used to travel the world playing concertos, and then I would sit and listen to the symphony. ~ Joshua Bell

You are the greatest poem ever written.
You are the greatest song ever sung.
You are the greatest portrait ever painted.
You are the greatest symphony ever composed.
You are the greatest act ever performed.
You are the greatest masterpiece ever created. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

World has already begun. That suffering nourishes grace, and pain and joy are arteries of the same heart - and mourning and dancing are but movements in His unfinished symphony of beauty. Can I believe the gospel, that God is patiently transfiguring all the notes of my life into the song of His Son? What in the world, in all this world, is grace? I can say it certain now: All is grace. I see through the woods of the world: God is always good and I am always loved. God is ~ Ann Voskamp

My name on his lips is a symphony. How can two simple beats of basic human language engulf me so completely? We stare at each other for a mini infinity. I'm terrified of speaking and breaking the spell that's fallen over us. ~ Sarah Nicolas

Around us the night creatures have their say. We are surrounded by a symphony of crickets and frogs. Neither of us feels the need to speak, and I suppose that is one of the qualities I find comforting in Kartik. We can be alone together. ~ Libba Bray

[On being asked how it felt to be the first female conductor of the Boston Symphony:] I've been a woman for a little more than fifty years, and I've gotten over my original astonishment. ~ Nadia Boulanger

The alarm in the morning? Well, I have an old tape of Carlo Maria Giulini conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in a perfectly transcendent version in Shubert's seventh symphony. And I've rigged it up so that at exactly 7:30 every morning it falls from the ceiling onto my face. ~ Stephen Fry

She preferred to lie up by the dunes with the waves bursting, to listen while they crashed like the final chords of a symphony except they went on and on. There was nothing as fine as that. ~ James Salter

It's like a perfect symphony of feeling, of emotion, of a love you thought was impossible; until suddenly the impossible becomes the inevitable. ~ Beth Michele

The sap rises and, itself a mixture of elements, flowers in a mixture of tones; the trees, the rocks, the granites cast their reflections in the mirror of the water; all the transparent objects seize and imprison colour reflections, both close and distant, as the light passes through them. As the star of day moves, the tones change in value, but always they respect their mutual sympathies and natural hatreds, and continue to live in harmony by reciprocal concessions. The shadows move slowly and drive before them or blot out the tones as the light itself, changing position, sets others vibrating. These mingle their reflections, and, modifying their qualities by casting over them transparent and borrowed glazes, multiply to infinity their melodious marriages and make them easier to achieve. When the great ball of fire sinks into the waters, red fanfares fly in all directions, a blood-red harmony spreads over the horizon, green turns to a deep red. But soon vast blue shadows chase rhythmically before them the crowd of orange and soft tones, which are like the distant and muted echoes of the light. This great symphony of today, which is the eternally renewed variation of the symphony of yesterday, this succession of melodies, where the variety comes always from the infinite, this complex hymn is called colour. ~ Charles Baudelaire

If he's a true symphony artist, he knows better than that because he knows that the only truly creative musician is the jazz musician. ~ Buddy Rich

...To study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly ... to listen to stars and buds, to babes and sages, with open heart; await occasions, hurry never ... this is my symphony. ~ William Henry Channing

I love Gustavo Dudamel and I love what he does for classical music, and I love what he comes out of, El Sistema and the old man Abreu. When we were in Venezuela, I had the chance to go to his building. He had, like, five or six orchestras playing of kids from the hood playing, like, Mahler's third symphony and Shostakovich fifth and Beethoven. Man, it's unbelievable. I mean, they could play. ~ Wynton Marsalis

From Lee's extensive quotes of Edwards on page 152 we can gather that the reason some reject good thoughts that might order their minds aright is because of a disposition of the heart, or a "taste" for evil. The habit of a person's mind is in accordance with his spiritual appetite, a good man's mind will always suggest and supply good and holy thoughts to connect ideas and information to create a beautiful picture in one's mind of God's orderly universe (Himself at the helm) but the evil man's mind is habitually disorganizing the things of this world or rather dis-integrating them from the knowledge of God, and so Edwards might say that his mind is not a cosmos but a chaos, or a conductor-less cacophony rather than a grand symphony. ~ Erick John Blore

All I know is that my life is filled with little pockets of silence. When I put a record on the turntable, for example, there`s a little interval-between the time the needle touches down on the record and the time the music actually starts-during which my heart refuses to beat. All I know is that between the rings of the telephone, between the touch of a button and the sound of the radio coming on, between the dimming of the lights at the cinema and the start of the film, between the lightning and the thunder, between the shout and the echo, between the lifting of a baton and the opening bars of a symphony, between the dropping of a stone and the plunk that comes back from the bottom of a well, between the ringing of the doorbell and the barking of the dogs I sometimes catch myself, involuntarily, listening for the sound of my mother`s voice, still waiting for the tape to begin. ~ Robert Hellenga

The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. It is marvelous, yet simple. ~ Victor Hugo

It's a heady aphrodisiac being exposed to his unique voice when he adopts that tone. His voice reverbs on a bunch of notes simultaneously. It's the first thing you notice about Ryan, his voice sounds like an orchestra playing a symphony composed by angels. It's most distracting until you grow immune to it, and now I'm back to completely infected with the Ryan voice virus. ~ Poppet

Water, wind and birdsong were the echoes in this quiet place of a great chiming symphony that was surging around the world. Knee-deep in grasses and moon daisies, Stella stood and listened, swaying a little as the flowers and trees were swaying, her spirit voice singing loudly, though her lips were still, and every pulse in her body beating its hammer strokes in time to the song. ~ Elizabeth Goudge

Each day's dawn is a sweet symphony and as long as I hear the music, my dreams will have to die another day. ~ Eric Vance Walton

I like your mind when it plays with mine. We harmonize, like a dirty sweet symphony. ~ Melody Lee

There is a tender breeze
Wafting around here
Feel it from your Soul
You will see Magic over here

Did I just now hear a beautiful symphony over here ?
Or is it just your soothing words murmuring in my ear?

Is it the cute mynah bird on my shoulder?
Or is it your soft head nestling that I feel so tender?

There is a tender breeze
Wafting around here
Feel it from your Soul
You will see Magic over here...

Did I just now hear the nightingale sing around here?
Or is it the breeze whispering softly to the trees near?

Is that you giggling away to glory?
Or is that just the flowers mingling with the bees and telling their story?

There is a tender breeze
Wafting around here
Feel it from your Soul
You will see Magic over here.. ~ Avijeet Das

It's not a crime to feel sad, down or depressed. Moving through difficult feelings is an essential part of living life authentically. Though society would have us believe that when we are sad, we need to smack a silly smile on our face and pretend everything is okay. Problems arise when we repress, deny or bury these feelings. We need to know when it's time to seek help and support, to avoid becoming overwhelmed by these types of emotion. Life is a bittersweet symphony, we need to hear every instrument and listen to every note. ~ Jaeda DeWalt

Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, this life. ~ The Verve

The truth is ... that the great artists of the world are never puritans, and seldom ever ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man - that is, virtuous in the YMCA sense - has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading, and it is highly improbable that the thing has ever been done by a virtuous woman. ~ H.L. Mencken

I never shied away from a challenge and I love doing big, epic films. They're interesting to me just on a pure music level, just in terms of the amount of music I could create for a symphony orchestra and chorus. ~ Howard Shore

Samson's grace and surefootedness at breakneck paces was the closest Roxleigh had ever come to some semblance of peace in his life. His head was never clearer, his nerves were never calmer, and his mind was never more unbound than when he rode Samson. He listened to the horse's steady breathing, the exertion of his exhalations, and the steady beat of his hooves, punctuated by the swift silence of the jumps and the exclamation of the landing, like a staccato symphony. His mind unfurled its stressed tethers with the smooth action of Samson at full speed. ~ Jenn LeBlanc

Being lost is where the beauty lies. Lost in a book. Lost in someone's eyes. Lost in a symphony so sweet it brings you to tears." She smiles. "Lost in a beautiful floating city on a starry night. This is magical, yes? It's being found that's the disappointment. ~ Lori Nelson Spielman

When the symphony of life fills your heart, the chorus of contentment joins in. ~ Tom Althouse

Modern drug based medicine is as incomplete as a novel written with three vowels. As discordant as a symphony constructed using only some of the notes. High dose nutritional therapy is the much needed missing part of our vocabulary of healthcare. The fight against disease needs all the help it can get. ~ Andrew W. Saul

I listen to the summer symphony outside my window. Truthfully, it's not a symphony at all. There's no tune, no melody, only the same notes over and over. Chirps and tweets and trills and burples. It's as if the insect orchestra is forever tuning its instruments, forever waiting for the maestro to tap his baton and bring them to order. I, for one, hope the maestro never comes. I love the music mess of it. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Do something that will last and be beautiful. It doesn't have to be a bridge-or a symphony or book or a business. It could be the look in the eye of a child you raise or a simple garden you tend. Do something that will last and be beautiful. ~ Ken Burns

Fear is a horrible mistress. Yet she clings at my heart like a violinist playing her sweet symphony. ~ Zoe K. Howard

The human being holds a universe within, filled with overlapping frequencies, and the result is a symphony of cosmic proportions. ~ Masaru Emoto

All artists are mothers. To be an artist is to be a creator, whether of a symphony or a supper or a painting or a person. Motherhood is the primary art, the art of creating (procreating) people. ~ Peter Kreeft

When I think of music, I think of music in its totality, complete. From the lowest blues to the highest symphony, you know, so what I'd like to do is exemplify each style of as many periods as I can possibly do. ~ Donny Hathaway

Outside Soviet Russia, and following the last symphonies of Mahler, Nielsen and Sibelius, an element of obsolescence has unmistakably attached itself to the genre. One could, perhaps, be forgiven for regarding Stravinsky's two ironic stylizations of the symphony as a fitting farewell salute. And yet the Shostakovich symphonies have, in Philip Larkin's phrase, 'penetrated the public mind' to an extent that has put them on a level with Beethoven. ~ Pauline Fairclough

And she could play the Beethoven symphony any time she wanted to. It was a queer thing about this music she had heard last autumn. The symphony stayed inside her always and grew little by little. The reason was this: the whole symphony was in her mind. It had to be. She had heard every note, and somewhere in the back of her mind the whole of the music was still there just as it had been played. But she could do nothing to bring it all out again. Except wait and be ready for the times when suddenly a new part came to her. Wait for it to grow like leaves grow slowly on the branches of a spring oak tree. ~ Carson McCullers

Without "Louie Louie" a symphony is not quite so grand. ~ Frank Zappa

Music - so different from painting - is the art which we enjoy most in company with others. A symphony, presented in a room with one other listener, would please him but little. ~ Robert Schumann

Although it was only six o'clock, the night was already dark. The fog, made thicker by its proximity to the Seine, blurred every detail with its ragged veils, punctured at various distances by the reddish glow of lanterns and bars of light escaping from illuminated windows. The road was soaked with rain and glittered under the street-lamps, like a lake reflecting strings of lights. A bitter wind, heavy with icy particles, whipped at my face, its howling forming the high notes of a symphony whose bass was played by swollen waves crashing into the piers of the bridges below. The evening lacked none of winter's rough poetry. ~ Theophile Gautier

Mathematics is an activity governed by the same rules imposed upon the symphonies of Beethoven, the paintings of DaVinci, and the poetry of Homer. ~ Edward Kasner

And ever since then, even though I was growing up in a land that had been tormented since the dawn of time, I refused to consider the world as a battlefield. I could see that wars beget wars, that reprisals follow reprisals, but I forbade myself to give them any support of any kind. I didn't believe in prophesies of discord, and I couldn't bring myself to accept the notion that God could incite his subjects to take up arms against one another and reduce the exercise of faith to an absurd and frightening question of power relationships.
And ever since then, I've trusted anyone who required a little of my blood to purify my soul about as much as I would trust a scorpion. I have no desire to believe in valves of tears or valleys of shadows- there are other more charming and less irrational features of the landscape all around me. My father said, "Anyone who tells you that a greater symphony exists than the breath in your body is lying. He wants to undermine your most beautiful possession: the chance to profit from every moment of your life. If you start from the principle that your worst enemy is the very person who tries to sow hatred in your heart, your halfway to happiness. All you have to do is reach out your hand and take the rest. And remember this: there is nothing, absolutely nothing, more important than your life. And your life isn't more important than other people's lives ~ Yasmina Khadra

The Russian composers, especially, tricked the symphony orchestra into the kind of dynamic, rhythmic thing. ~ Gerry Mulligan

A divorce is like a symphony with a screeching sound at the end - the fact that it ended badly does not mean it was all bad. ~ Daniel Kahneman

Perhaps the experience had been so complete that repetition would be vulgarity - like asking to hear the same symphony twice in a day. ~ C.S. Lewis

Jacques wants a pancake shaped like Mozart's Symphony No. 40! In G minor! ~ Michelle Cuevas