Composer Quotes

“We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.”

“Music is the purest form of art... therefore true poets...seek to express the universe in terms of music. The singer has everything within him. The notes come out from his very life. They are not materials gathered from outside.”

“A teacher can never truly teach unless he is still learning himself. A lamp can never light another lamp unless it continues to burn its own flame. The teacher who has come to the end of his subject, who has no living traffic with his knowledge but merely repeats his lesson to his students, can only load their minds, he cannot quicken them.”

“Things in which we do not take joy are either a burden upon our minds to be got rid of at any cost; or they are useful, and therefore in temporary and partial relation to us, becoming burdensome when their utility is lost; or they are like wandering vagabonds, loitering for a moment on the outskirts of our recognition, and then passing on. A thing is only completely our own when it is a thing of joy to us.”

“These paper boats of mine are meant to dance on the ripples of hours, and not reach any destination.”

“Those who own much have much to fear.”

“Plant flowers in others' gardens and your life becomes a bouquet! Submitted by Lisa Letto, Coordinator, Nutrition Resource and Volunteer Centre, College of Pharmacy and Nutrition, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan, Canada I slept and I dreamed that life is all joy, I woke and I saw that life is all service. I served and I saw that service is joy.”

“Gray hairs are signs of wisdom if you hold your tongue, speak and they are but hairs, as in the young.”

“Let me light my lamp", says the star, "And never debate if it will help to remove the darkness”

“The problem is not how to wipe out all differences, but how to unite with all differences intact.”

“The young student sits with his head bent over his books, and his mind straying in youth's dreamland; where prose is prowling on the desk and poetry hiding in the heart.”

“Depth of friendship does not depend on length of acquaintance.”

“Melody and harmony are like lines and colors in pictures. A simple linear picture may be completely beautiful; the introduction of color may make it vague and insignificant. Yet color may, by combination with lines, create great pictures, so long as it does not smother and destroy their value.”

“Love gives beauty to everything it touches.”

“The smile that flickers on a baby’s lips when he sleeps- does anyone know where it was born? Yes, there is a rumor that a young pale beam of a crescent moon touched the edge of a vanishing autumn cloud, and there the smile was first born in the dream of a dew-washed morning.”

“The birds looked upon me as nothing but a man, quite a trifling creature without wings-and they would have nothing to do with me. Were it not so I would build a small cabin for myself among their crowd of nests and pass my days counting the sea waves.”

“When old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.”

“Oh my only friend, my best beloved, the gates are open in my house—do not pass by like a dream.”

“And, indeed, what little of beauty and peace is to be found in the societies of men is owing to the daily performance of small duties, not to big doings and fine talk.”

“Discipline divorced from wisdom is not true discipline, but merely the meaningless following of custom, which is only a disguise for stupidity.”

“Death belongs to life as birth does The walk is in the raising of the foot as in the laying of it down”

“Those who draw their sustenance from science are blessed. It is for me to only derive an occasional pleasure. This is nothing worthy of conceit, but I am indeed touched by the joys. This book is an ode to such joys, a digest of my collections from various sources.”

“And joy is everywhere; it is in the earth's green covering of grass; in the blue serenity of the sky.”

“With begging and scrambling we find very little, but with being true to ourselves we find a great deal more.”

“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free.”