“When words leave off, music begins.”

— Heinrich Heine

As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1977) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 343

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Heinrich Heine 61

German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic 1797–1856

Heinrich Heine quote: “When words leave off, music begins.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 35 (p. 577)

“If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

“The author's conviction on this day of the New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.”

Ezra Pound book ABC of Reading

Preface
ABC of Reading (1934)

“If I could express the same thing with words as with music, I would, of course, use a verbal expression. Music is something autonomous and much richer. Music begins where the possibilities of language end. That is why I write music.”

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) Finnish composer of the late Romantic period

Interview with Berlingske Tidende, June 10, 1919. http://www.sibelius.fi/english/omin_sanoin/ominsanoin_16.htm

“For now the poet can not die,
Nor leave his music as of old,
But round him ere he scarce be cold
Begins the scandal and the cry.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate

To ———, after reading a Life and Letters, stanza 4, from Poems (1850)

“The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
Context: The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body. Always an orchestra, and just as music traverses walls, so sensuality traverses the body and reaches up to ecstasy.

“Be brief, be pointed, let your matter stand
Lucid in order, solid and at hand;
Spend not your words on trifles but condense;
Strike with the mass of thought, not drops of sense;
Press to close with vigor, once begun,
And leave, (how hard the task!) leave off, when done.”

Joseph Story (1779–1845) US Supreme Court justice

"Advice to a Young Lawyer", The American jurist and law magazine: Volume 5 (1831), p. 298.

“Words cannot always do the work we need them to. Music is there for when words fail us.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

“I’m a word freak. I like words. I’ve always compared writing to music. That’s the way I feel about good paragraphs. When it really works, it’s like music.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

“Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory.”

Thomas Beecham (1879–1961) British conductor and impresario

[Beecham admitted to Neville Cardus that he had made this up on the spur of the moment to satisfy an importunate journalist; he acknowledged that it was an oversimplification. (Neville Cardus: 'Sir Thomas Beecham, A Memoir', 1961)]

“When words leave off, music begins.”

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