“Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.”
Musik höhere Offenbarung ist als alle Weisheit und Philosophie.
http://books.google.com/books?id=W2k6AAAAcAAJ&q=%22Musik+h%C3%B6here+Offenbarung+ist+als+alle+Weisheit+und+Philosophie%22&pg=PA193#v=onepage
As reported by Bettina von Arnim in a letter to Goethe, 28 May 1810.
Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde: Seinem Denkmal, Volume 2, Dümmler, 1835, p. 193.
Variant: Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.
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Ludwig Van Beethoven43
German Romantic composer 1770–1827Related quotes
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) German writer
as quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Tribute_to_Hinduism.html?id=G3AMAQAAMAAJ
Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman
Source: The Sword or the Cross, Which Should be the Weapon of the Christian Militant? (1921), Ch.4 p. 62
“Understanding the knowledge and wisdom of the Qur'an is by far, higher than memorizing.”
Ali (601–661) cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad
Muhammad Kulayni, Usūl al-Kāfī, vol. 4, p. 418
Regarding the Qur'an
“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.”
Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism
Source: Natural Right and History (1953), p. 75
Context: Philosophy has to grant that revelation is possible. But to grant that revelation is possible means to grant that philosophy is perhaps something infinitely unimportant. To grant that revelation is possible means to grant that the philosophic life is not necessarily, not evidently, the right life. Philosophy, the life devoted to the quest for evident knowledge available to man as man, would itself rest on an unevident, arbitrary, or blind decision. This would merely confirm the thesis of faith, that there is no possibility of consistency, of a consistent and thoroughly sincere life, without belief in revelation. The mere fact that philosophy and revelation cannot refute each other would constitute the refutation of philosophy by revelation.
“Human beings have not been given anything higher than wisdom and intellect.”
Musa al-Kadhim (745–799) Seventh of the Twelve Imams and regarded by Sunnis as a renowned scholar
Ibn Shu’ba al-Harrani, Tuhaf al-'Uqul, p. 419.
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, General
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
Walking (June 1862)
Source: Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer
"Packard Goose"
"Joe's Garage Acts II & III" (1979)
Variant: Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best.