Quotes By The Day

[conlor]

This thread is for quotes by someone who was born or died in the past on the date of the post. Quotes by a person who accomplished something on the anniversary date may also be posted.




Classic Quotes by Johann S. Bach (1685-1750) German composer and organist

The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.
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It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.
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Bring me a bowl of coffee before I turn into a goat.
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I have always kept one end in view, namely, with all good will to conduct a well-regulated church music to the honor of God.
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Music is an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible delights of the soul.
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Where there is devotional music, God is always at hand with His gracious presence.
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My masters are strange folk with very little care for music in them.
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My present post amounts to about 700 thaler, and when there are rather more funerals than usual, the fees rise in proportion; but when a healthy wind blows, they fall accordingly.

[conlor]

Classic Quotes by Marcel Marceau (3/22/1923- ) French mime

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us without words?
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I have designed my style pantomimes as white ink drawings on black backgrounds, so that man's destiny appears as a thread lost in an endless labyrinth. I have tried to shed some gleams of light on the shadow of man startled by his anguish.
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In silence and movement you can show the reflection of people.
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It's good to shut up sometimes.
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Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.
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Music conveys moods and images. Even in opera, where plots deal with the structure of destiny, it's music, not words, that provides power.
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Never get a mime talking. He won't stop.
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To communicate through silence is a link between the thoughts of man.
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What sculptors do is represent the essence of gesture. What is important in mime is attitude.

[Snowden]

Doesn't it seem amusing to have quotes from a mime! These are the speechless ones - and Marceau was one of the most famous. Interesting; I never would have expected words of wisdom - or anything else! - from him.

[conlor]

I like these and wanted to add them.

For March 20th:


Classic Quotes by Henrik Ibsen (3/20/1828-1906) Norwegian dramatist and poet

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.
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A forest bird never wants a cage.
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A marriage based on full confidence, based on complete and unqualified frankness on both sides; they are not keeping anything back; there's no deception underneath it all. If I might so put it, it's an agreement for the mutual forgiveness of sin.
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A minority may be right, and a majority is always wrong.
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A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.
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Castles in the air - -they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build as well.
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Do not use that foreign word "ideals." We have that excellent native word "lies."
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I'm afraid for all those who'll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!

[conlor]

Classic Quotes by Wernher von Braun (2/23/1912-1977) German-American rocket expert

Don't tell me that man doesn't belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go - and he'll do plenty well when he gets there.
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For my confirmation, I didn't get a watch and my first pair of long pants, like most Lutheran boys. I got a telescope. My mother thought it would make the best gift.
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I have learned to use the word "impossible" with the greatest caution.
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It will free man from the remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet.
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Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft... and the only one that can be mass-produced with unskilled labor.
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Our sun is one of 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of billions of galaxies populating the universe. It would be the height of presumption to think that we are the only living things in that enormous immensity.
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Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
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There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program - your tax-dollar will go further.
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We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.

[conlor]

Classic Quotes by William Morris (1834-1896) English poet, artist, craftsman, designer, social reformer, and printe

A man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body. Memory and imagination help him as he works.
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I pondered all these things, and how men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name.
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If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
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Of rich men it telleth, and strange is the story how they have, and they hanker, and grip far and wide; And they live and they die, and the earth and its glory has been but a burden they scarce might abide.
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So long as the system of competition in the production and exchange of the means of life goes on, the degradation of the arts will go on; and if that system is to last for ever, then art is doomed, and will surely die; that is to say, civilization will die.
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With the arrogance of youth, I determined to do no less than to transform the world with Beauty. If I have succeeded in some small way, if only in one small corner of the world, amongst the men and women I love, then I shall count myself blessed, and blessed, and blessed, and the work goes on.

[conlor]

Classic Quotes by Flannery O'Connor (3/25/1925-1964) American author

All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal.
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Conviction without experience makes for harshness.
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Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
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I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best.
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I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I'm afraid it will not be controversial.
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I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.
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I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.
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It is better to be young in your failures than old in your successes.
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It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have.
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Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners, we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers.