Quotes And Sayings

Classic music is th' kind that we keep thinkin'll turn into a tune.
- Frank McKinney

Discord occasions a momentary distress to the ear, which remains unsatisfied, and even uneasy, until it hears something better.
- Charles Burney

Discord occasions a momentary distress to the ear, which remains unsatisfied, and even uneasy, until it hears something better. I am convinced...that provided the ear be at length made amends, there are few dissonances too strong for it. Disharmony, to paraphrase Bergson's statement about disorder, is simply a harmony to which many are unaccustomed.
- John Cage

Canned music is like audible wallpaper.
- Alistair Cooke

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.
- Miles Davis

From Mozart I learnt to say important things in a conversational way.
- George Bernard Shaw

Generally music feedeth that disposition of the spirits which it findeth.
- Francis Bacon

God tells me how he wants the music played - and you get in his way.
- Arturo Toscanini

Handel was a man of the world; but Bach was a world of a man.
- Arnold Stevenson

He was dying all his life.
- Hector Berlioz

I am sure my music has a taste of codfish in it.
- Edvard Grieg

I do not mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is the language I don't understand.
- Edward Appleton

In the Negro melodies of America I find all that is needed for a great and noble school of music.
- Antonin Dvorak

It is the best of all trades to make songs, and the second best to sing them.
- Hilaire Belloc

Jazz came to America 300 years ago in chains.
- Paul Whiteman

Jazz is about the only form of art existing today in which there is freedom of the individual without the loss of group contact.
- Dave Brubeck

Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.
- Ornette Coleman

A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do.
- Miles Davis

A symphony is a stage play with the parts written for instruments instead of for actors.
- Colin Wilson

An ear for music is very different from a taste for music. I have no ear whatever; I could not sing an air to save my life; but I have the intensest delight in music, and can detect good from bad.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Jazz will endure just as long as people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.
- John Philip Sousa

Mozart is sunshine.
- Antonin Dvorak

Music sweeps by me as a messenger carrying a message that is not for me.
- George Eliot

Mozart's music gives us permission to live.
- John Updike

Music is a strange thing. I would almost say it is a miracle. For it stands halfway between thought and phenomenon, between spirit and matter.
- Heinrich Heine

Music is another planet.
- Alphonse Daudet

Music is the art of thinking with sounds.
- Jules Combarieu

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.
- Thomas Carlyle

Beethoven can write music, thank God - but he can do nothing else on earth.
- Ludwig van Beethoven

The public doesn't want new music; the main thing that it demands of a composer is that he be dead.
- Arthur Honegger

I have sat through an Italian opera, til, for sheer pain, and inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded street, to solace myself with sounds which I was not obliged to follow and get rid of the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention!
- Charles Lamb

Let us not forget that the greatest composers were also the greatest thieves. They stole from everyone and everywhere.
- Pablo Casals

Just the other day I sent the girlfriend a huge pile of snow...I rang her up and said: "Did you get my drift?"
-- Peter Kay

A dreamcatcher works, if your dream is to be gay.
-- Demetri Martin

Every fight is a food fight when you’re a cannibal.
-- Demetri Martin

I think the worst time to have a heart attack is during a game of charades...or a game of fake heart attack.
-- Demetri Martin

Always end the name of your child with a vowel, so that when you yell the name will carry.
-- Bill Cosby

If it's sent by ship then it's a cargo, if it's sent by road then it's a shipment.
-- Dave Allen

A secretary ran into the bosses office and said "Can I use your dictaphone?" He says, "no, use your finger like everybody else"
-- Bernard Manning

Ken dodd of all the comedians - tight. We went to a stripshow and he wanted half of his money back because one of the strippers only had one t*t.
-- Bernard Manning

We used to sleep five to a bed and three of them used to wet the bed. I learnt to swim before I could walk.
-- Bernard Manning

How could Bernard Manning be a racist when he had four black horses pulling his coffin?
-- Frank Carson

I once got sacked for laughing ... mind you, I was driving a hearse at the time.
-- Bernard Manning

We spend our lives on the run: we get up by the clock, eat and sleep by the clock, get up again, go to work - and then we retire. And what do they give us? A clock.
-- Dave Allen

I backed a horse today at 20:1. It came in at twenty past four.
-- Tommy Cooper

I'm not saying the wife's ugly, but last christmas she stood under the mistle toe waiting for someone to kiss and she was still there at lent. In fact she went to see that film the Elephant Man and the audience thought she was making a personal appearance.
-- Les Dawson 

When a man is wrong and won't admit is, he always gets angry. -Thomas Haliburton.
-Thomas Haliburton

Two things a man should never be angry at: what he can help, and what he cannot help. Clarendon -Thomas Fuller.
-Thomas Fuller

Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be. -Thomas a Kempis.
-Thomas à Kempis

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness. -James Thurber.
-James Thurber

Being angered is the greatest defeat to a human being.
-Kazi Shams

Beware of the fury of the patient man. -John Dryden.
-John Dryden

Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.
-Phyllis Diller

I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. -Booker T. Washington.
-Booker T. Washington

Character isn't inherited. One builds it daily by the way one thinks and acts, thought by thought, action by action. If one lets fear or hate or anger take possession of the mind, they become self-forged chains. -Helen Douglas.
-Helen Douglas

To rule one's anger is well; to prevent it is still better. -Tryon Edwards.
-Tryon Edwards

You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist. -Golda Meir.
-Golda Meir

Expressing anger is a form of public littering. -Willard Gaylin.
-Willard Gaylin

Never forget what a man says to you when he is angry. Lawrence J. Peter -Henry Beecher.
-Henry Beecher

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
-Ambrose Bierce

Don't hold to anger, hurt or pain. They steal your energy and keep you from love. -Leo Buscaglia.
-Leo Buscaglia

Anger is only the will to reform.
-Eden Ella

Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame. Seneca -Benjamin Franklin.
-Benjamin Franklin

If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?
-Sydney J. Harris

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm any hostility. -HW Longfellow.
-Hw Longfellow

How much more grevious are the consequences of anger than the causes of it. -Marcus Aurelius.
-Marcus Aurelius

Every time you get angry, you poison your own system. -Alfred Montapert.
-Alfred Montapert

Men are like steel: when they lose their temper, they lose their worth. -Chuck Norris.
-Chuck Norris

A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self control is the rule. Anger is an uncontrollable feeling that betrays what you are when you are not yourself. Anger is that powerful internal force that blows out the light of reason. Know this to be the enemy: it is anger, born of desire. -Ralph Waldo Emerson.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Anger is seldom without an argument but seldom with a good one. -Lord Halifax.
-Lord Halifax

Those who the Gods would destroy First they would make angry Haliburton -Greek.
-Greek Proverb

When I am right, I get angry. Churchill gets angry when he is wrong. So we were often angry at each other. -Charles De Gaulle.
-Charles De Gaulle

Keep cool; anger is not an argument. -Daniel Webster.
-Daniel Webster

“Dogs need to sniff the ground; it's how they keep abreast of current events. The ground is a giant dog newspaper, containing all kinds of late-breaking dog news items, which, if they are especially urgent, are often continued in the next yard.”
-Dave Barry

“A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.”
-Robert Benchley

“The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.”
-Charles de Gaulle

“Dogs have a way of finding the people who need them, filling an emptiness we don’t even know we have.”
-Thom Jones

“In the world which we know, among the different and primitive geniuses that preside over the evolution of the several species, there exists not one, excepting that of the dog, that ever gave a thought to the presence of man.”
- Maurice Maeterlinck

“Thorns may hurt you, men desert you, sunlight turn to fog; but you’re never friendless ever, if you have a dog.”
-Douglas Mallock

“The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.”
- Andrew A. Rooney

“A dog is not ‘almost human,’ and I know of no greater insult to the canine race than to describe it as such.”
- John Holmes

“Women and cats will do as they please and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”
-Robert A. Heinlein

“In order to keep a true perspective of one’s importance, everyone should have a dog that will worship him and a cat that will ignore him.”
-Dereke Bruce

“Who kicks a dog kicks his own soul towards hell.”
-Will Judy

“A man’s soul can be judged by the way he treats his dog.”
-Charles Doran

“Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.”
-Ann Landers

“When most of us talk to our dogs, we tend to forget they’re not people.”
-Julia Glass

“A person who has never owned a dog has missed a wonderful part of life.”
-Bob Barker

“We give dogs time we can spare, space we can spare and love we can spare. And in return, dogs give us their all. It’s the best deal man has ever made.”
-M.Facklam

It'll be a great day when education gets all the money it wants and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers.
-Author unknown, quoted in You Said a Mouthful edited by Ronald D. Fuchs

I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, "Mother, what was war?"
-Eve Merriam

The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind.  If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
-Albert Einstein

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.
-David Friedman

"There are no atheists in foxholes" isn't an argument against atheism, it's an argument against foxholes.
-James Morrow

The most persistent sound which reverberates through men's history is the beating of war drums.
-Arthur Koestler, Janus: A Summing Up

What a cruel thing is war:  to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.
-Robert E. Lee, letter to his wife, 1864

Everyone's a pacifist between wars.  It's like being a vegetarian between meals.
-Colman McCarthy

Sometimes I think it should be a rule of war that you have to see somebody up close and get to know him before you can shoot him.
-M*A*S*H, Colonel Potter

All the arms we need are for hugging.
-Author Unknown

Give me the money that has been spent in war and I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud.  I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth.  I will crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to peace.
-Charles Sumner

War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
-Bertrand Russell

A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.
-Napoleon

If we do not end war - war will end us.  Everybody says that, millions of people believe it, and nobody does anything.
-H.G. Wells, Things to Come (the "film story"), Part III, adapted from his 1933 novel The Shape of Things to Come, spoken by the character John Cabal (Thanks Bill!)

A great war leaves the country with three armies - an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.
-German Proverb

The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience.  Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.  We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.
-Omar Bradley

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.  This world in arms is not spending money alone.  It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.  This is not a way of life at all in any true sense.  Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower