“I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.”

— Oscar Wilde , book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

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Irish writer and poet 1854–1900

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“Wagner's music is better than it sounds.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Actually by Bill Nye, possibly confused due to Nye quoting Twain in More Tramps Abroad, 1897. (See also autobiography, vol. 1, p. 288.)
Misattributed

“I make music all the time that no-one ever hears. Y' know, I sing in the shower, I hit on things. Music is life - life is music. Of all people, Nietzsche said 'Life without music is an error'. And so I'll be making music one way or another. Oh believe me, I make music.. I've made whole records that no-one heard. Oh they came out, no-one bought them! We used to do whole secret tours, we used to stand outside like 'We're playing tonight!”

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and only the bouncers and bartenders would see you. I'm used to it. I'm that tree that falls in the forest.
Clip for Studio4a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6SuvanvZFY&feature=related at youtube.com

“When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

“The late Bill Nye once said "I have been told that Wagner's music is better than it sounds."”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010), p. 288

“A lot of musicians are going to have to retrain. It's nonsense to say that traditional classical music is more complex. Contemporary pieces by Harrison Birtwistle are much harder to play than Mozart or Wagner. I know a lot of people don't want to hear that.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

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“The relation of the performance of music to sound is complex and ambiguous: this is what makes possible Mark Twain's joke that Wagner is better than he sounds.”

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Source: Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist (2002), Ch. 1 Body and Mind

“When translating prose dialogue one ought to make the characters say things that people talking English could conceivably say. One ought to hear them talking, just as a novelist hears his characters talk.”

Arthur Waley (1889–1966) British academic

"Notes on Translation", in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 202, No. 5 (November 1958), p. 109

“What music is more enchanting than the voices of young people, when you can't hear what they say?”

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“Music is like a dream. One that I cannot hear.”

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“Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people say about each other. But it is not so widely realized that even less can one trust what people say about themselves.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

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