Classical Quotes

“If Music is a Place -- then Jazz is the City, Folk is the Wilderness, Rock is the Road, Classical is a Temple.”
― Vera Nazarian

“Just when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone.”
― Gustave Flaubert, The Letters, 1830-1880

“The melancholy of the antique world seems to me more profound than that of the moderns, all of whom more or less imply that beyond the dark void lies immortality. But for the ancients that ‘black hole’ is infinity itself; their dreams loom and vanish against a background of immutable ebony. No crying out, no convulsions—nothing but the fixity of the pensive gaze.

With the gods gone, and Christ not yet come, there was a unique moment, from Cicero to Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone. Nowhere else do I find that particular grandeur.”
― Flaubert Gustave

“War is sweet to those who have not experienced it.”
― Desiderius Erasmus

“When left alone, quantum particles behave as multiple images of themselves (as waves, really), simultaneously moving through all possible paths in space and time. Now, again, why do we not experience this multitude around ourselves? Is it because we are probing things around us all the time? Why do all experiments that involve, say, the position of a particle make the particle suddenly be somewhere rather than everywhere? No one knows. Before you probe it, a particle is a wave of possibilities. After you've probed it, it is somewhere, and subsequently it is somewhere for ever, rather than everywhere again. Strange, that. Nothing, within the laws of quantum physics, allows for such a collapse to happen. It is an experimental mystery and a theoretical one. Quantum physics stipulates that whenever something is there, it can transform into something else, of course, but it cannot disappear. And since quantum physics allows for multiple possibilities simultaneously, these possibilities should then keep existing, even after a measurement is made. But they don't. Every possibility but one vanishes. We do not see any of the others around us. We live in a classical world, where everything is based on quantum laws but nothing resembles the quantum world.”
― Christophe Galfard, The Universe in Your Hand: A Journey Through Space, Time, and Beyond

“Against what is stupid, nonsensical, erroneous, and evil, [classical] liberalism fights with the weapons of the mind, and not with brute force and repression.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition

“If one prevents a man from working for the good of society while at the same time providing for the satisfaction of his own needs, then only one way remains open to him: to make himself richer and others poorer by the violent oppression and spoliation of his fellow men.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition

“Beethoven introduced us to anger. Haydn taught us capriciousness, Rachmaninoff melancholy. Wagner was demonic. Bach was pious. Schumann was mad, and because his genius was able to record his fight for sanity, we heard what isolation and the edge of lunacy sounded like. Liszt was lusty and vigorous and insisted that we confront his overwhelming sexuality as well as our own. Chopin was a poet, and without him we never would have understood what night was, what perfume was, what romance was.”
― Doris Mortman, The Wild Rose

“Men are not born equal in themselves, so I think it beneath a man to postulate that they are. If I thought myself as good as Sokrates I should be a fool; and if, not really believing it, I asked you to make me happy by assuring me of it, you would rightly despise me. So why should I insult my fellow-citizens by treating them as fools and cowards? A man who thinks himself as good as everyone else will be at no pains to grow better. On the other hand, I might think myself as good as Sokrates, and even persuade other fools to agree with me; but under a democracy, Sokrates is there in the Agora to prove me wrong. I want a city where I can find my equals and respect my betters, whoever they are; and where no one can tell me to swallow a lie because it is expedient, or some other man's will.”
― Mary Renault, The Last of the Wine

“Classical music is the best, and cheapest, mind-altering drug in the world.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“If you would dance, my pretty Count, I'll play the tune on my little guitar..”
― Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

“Epic art is founded on action, and the model of a society in which action could play out in greatest freedom was that of the heroic Greek period; so said Hegel, and he demonstrated it with The Iliad: even though Agamemnon was the prime king, other kings and princes chose freely to join him and, like Achilles, they were free to withdraw from the battle. Similarly the people joined with their princes of their own free will; there was no law that could force them; behavior was determined only by personal motives, the sense of honor, respect, humility before a more powerful figure, fascination with a hero's courage, and so on. The freedom to participate in the struggle and the freedom to desert it guaranteed every man his independence. In this way did action retain a personal quality and thus its poetic form.

Against this archaic world, the cradle of the epic, Hegel contrasts the society of his own period: organized into the state, equipped with a constitution, laws, a justice system, an omnipotent administration, ministries, a police force, and so on. The society imposes its moral principles on the individual, whose behavior is thus determined by far more anonymous wishes coming from the outside than by his own personality. And it is in such a world that the novel was born.”
― Milan Kundera, The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts

“String theory makes sense to me because the universe is a symphony that creates harmony with the vibration of our strings.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“The power of classical music turns my words into fire.”
― Adrienne Posey

“ويهتف بى صوت يسرى مع الرياح: "ألم يندمل القرح؟" فأقول: "بل زاد
نكأه" فيقول: "ألا يعزيك عن الراحل شئ؟" فأقول: "إن العزاء لا يتطاول إليه" ويقول: "أتضيع عمرك وراء أمل خاب؟" فأقول: "لست أول من أضاعه" فيقول: "أتعشق الرميم؟" فأقول: "والرماد والهشيم" فيقول: "تكاد تجن به؟" فأقول: "وأوشك أعبده”
― يوسف السباعي, أغنيات

“What was truly specific to Nazi architecture was its crushing monumentality, which aimed to herd the people and overwhelm or stun the subjected masses, as Speer later realized. The gigantism that characterized Nazi architecture seemed to aim to crush the individual and bear down upon the people through its disproportionate size, compressing them into a compact mass so that every interstitial space that distanced or differentiated one person from another disappeared into the greater whole of an organic totalitarian entity. The political space of the democratic agon, a space "paradoxically linked to division," was destroyed. Nazi architecture created sites for the fusion of the masses and for compressing them into a single, unified subject. It was stagecraft in granite, the physical orchestration of a new type of rapport between the individual and the state in terms of the mass, whether the compact mass of stone or the more malleable mass of humanity that, gathered into columns, made the pillars and lines of this architecture even more monumental.”
― Johann Chapoutot, Ο εθνικοσοσιαλισμός και η αρχαιότητα

“If you would dance, my pretty Count, I'll play the tune on my little guitar..”
― Figaro, from Le Nozze di Figaro

“The 'magic' is the known and unknown quiet, spiritual, invisible thread which links and reveals harmonic elements to a universe of high vibrational sensory. And our beloved Bro. Maurice David knew it's undeniable creative power, from within.”
― T.F. Hodge

“Pavlov’s dogs will drool at the site of any food,
So go ahead and ring the bell,
Sing a classical song about it and
Then advertises what sells”
― Charmaine J Forde

“[...] las palabras exageradas que ocultaban medianas afecciones”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“… and poured libations out to the everlasting gods who never die — to Athena first of all, the daughter of Zeus with flashing sea-grey eyes — and the ship went plunging all night long and through the dawn" (R. Fagles translation)”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“—Cada día, Sancho —dijo don Quijote—, te vas haciendo menos simple y más discreto.

—Sí, que algo se me ha de pegar de la discreción de vuestra merced —respondió Sancho—, que las tierras que de suyo son estériles y secas, estercolándolas y cultivándolas vienen a dar buenos frutos. Quiero decir que la conversación de vuestra merced ha sido el estiércol que sobre la estéril tierra de mi seco ingenio ha caído; la cultivación, el tiempo que ha que le sirvo y comunico; y con esto espero de dar frutos de mí que sean de bendición, tales que no desdigan ni deslicen de los senderos de la buena crianza que vuesa merced ha hecho en el agostado entendimiento mío.”
― Cervantes Saavedra Miguel De, AVENTURAS DE DON QUIJOTE DE LA MANCHA, LAS

“Chi il bel sogno di Doretta
potè indovinar?
Il suo mister come mai
come mai fini

Ahimè! un giorno uno studente
in bocca la baciò
e fu quel bacio
rivelazione:
fu la passione!

Folle amore!
Folle ebbrezza!
Chi la sottil carezza
d'un bacio così ardente
mai ridir potrà?

Ah! mio sogno!
Ah! mia vita!
Che importa la ricchezza
se alfine è rifiorita
la felicità!
O sogno d'or
poter amar così!”
― Giacomo Puccini, La Rondine in Full Score

“Those who like to interpret historical facts symbolically may recognize in this the spirit of a specifically "modern" conception of the world which permits the subject to assert itself against the object as something independent and equal; whereas classical antiquity did not as yet permit the explicit formulation of this contrast; and whereas the Middle Ages believed the subject as well as the object to be submerged in a higher unity.”
― Erwin Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts

“Loyalty is a treasure that no gigantic brimstone can abolish.”
― D.L. Lewis

“Living for the colorfulness of uniqueness is a God-given competence for enduring elegance, joyfulness, faithfulness, and compassion.”
― D.L. Lewis

“Whatever you establish in this present time, do it with faith! Your beautiful foundation will be worthy, fabulous, and marvelously incredible.”
― D.L. Lewis

“The word beautiful belongs to you, while the word classic is reserved for me. - Niedria D. Kenny”
― Niedria D. Kenny

“Classical graffiti
Brick canvas modern fresco
I am the real thing”
― Nanette L. Avery

“There are many persons ready to do what is right because in their hearts they know it is right. But they hesitate, waiting for the other fellow to make the first move - and he, in turn, waits for you.”
― Marian Anderson, Written by Herself: Autobiographies of American Women: An Anthology