Quotes about dance and ballet

A collection of quotes on the topic of art, music, dance, dancing.

Best quotes about dance and ballet

“I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Variant: I would only believe in a god who could dance.
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

“Life is the dancer and you are the dance.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

A New Earth (2005)
Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“Even when she walks one would believe that she dances.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

“Shall we dance, friend of my heart?”

Christopher Paolini book Eldest

Eragon
Source: Eldest (2005)

“Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

“Everything went like a dance.”

Roald Amundsen (1872–1928) Norwegian polar researcher, who was the first to reach the South Pole

citation needed

“See the music, hear the dance.”

George Balanchine (1904–1983) Georgian choreographer, dancer and ballet master (1904-1983)

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Quotes about dance and ballet

“Never, ever, let anyone tell you what you can and can't do. Prove the cynics wrong. Pity them for they have no imagination. The sky's the limit. Your sky. Your limit. Now. Let's dance.”

Tom Hiddleston (1981) English actor, producer and musical performer

Imagination

“Always remember. You will live. You will love. You will dance again.”

Jennifer Lopez book True Love

Source: True Love

Love

“Why not just tell people I'm an alien from Mars. Tell them I eat live chickens and do a voodoo dance at midnight. They'll believe anything you say, because you're a reporter. But if I, Michael Jackson, were to say, "I'm an alien from Mars and I eat live chickens and do a voodoo dance at midnight," people would say, "Oh, man, that Michael Jackson is nuts. He's cracked up. You can't believe a damn word that comes out of his mouth."”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

http://rocknrollworldmagazine.com/2015/08/82915-rock-history/

People

“I don't understand how people can stand next to you one year, and next year, they cannot. They're going crazy, screaming. They can't take it that you're there. But last year I was in the same club, walking around, lonely. Couldn't get a date or a dance. I was too skinny, too something, and now, "He's just adorable. He's just, oh!”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Source: Resurrection, 1971-1996

Understanding, People

“Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: "The Flaw in Paganism" in Death and Taxes (1931)

Love, Lie, Drink

“When I die I'm going to dance first in all the galaxies… I'm gonna play and dance and sing.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

Singing

“To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarates, the performing arts (such as acting and dance) entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning in into slumber. The other arts make no such retreat— some because they use visible and hence vital formulas, others because they live from human life itself.
This isn't the case with literature. Literature simulates life. A novel is a story of what never was, a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings a language no one uses, because no one talks in verse.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Life, Art, Music, Way

“Our interactions with one another reflect a dance between love and fear.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Love, Fear

“I wouldn't have been surprised if they had voted me Most Likely To Kill Everyone At A High School Dance.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

As quoted in Howl (1993-07-22).
Interviews (1989-1994), Print

School

“Consciousness expresses itself through creation. This world we live in is the dance of the Creator. Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye but the dance lives on. On many an occasion when I am dancing, I have felt touched by something sacred. In those moments, I felt my spirit soar and become one with everything that exists. I become the stars and the moon. I become the lover and the beloved. I become the victor and the vanquished. I become the master and the slave. I become the singer and the song. I become the knower and the known. I keep on dancing and then, it is the eternal dance of creation. The Creator and the creation merge into one wholeness of joy. I keep on dancing — until there is only … the dance.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

"The Dance" - from inlay sleeve of Dangerous (1991)

World, Star, Lovers, Joy

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter One

Death, Fate, Imagination, Sense

“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering its a feather bed. ”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Love, World, Dreams, Courage

“Life's not about waiting for the storm to pass… it's about learning to dance in the rain. ”

Вивиан Грин (1979) American musician

Motivational, For women, Deep, Happy

“Those who dance appear insane to those who cannot hear the music.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Misattributed
First recorded appearance: Germaine de Staël's On Germany (1813). ". . . sometimes even in the habitual course of life, the reality of this world disappears all at once, and we feel ourselves in the middle of its interests as we should at a ball, where we did not hear the music; the dancing that we saw there would appear insane." There are several other pre-Nietzsche examples, indicating that the phrase was widespread in the nineteenth-century; it was referred to in 1927 as an "old proverb".

Music, Appearance

“Somebody that's not real. They go in the studio and all of the sudden become hard, when they used to do dance music.”

Eazy-E (1963–1995) American rapper and producer

On Studio Gangsters
1990s

Music

“Get on the floor and dance with me,
I love the way you shake your thing especially.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Get on the Floor (co-written with Louis Johnson)
Off the Wall (1979)

Love, Way

“Music is so important to us. We hear music from the moment we are born, often via lullabies, and through many of the most important occasions in our lives, from graduations to weddings to funerals. There is something about music that seems to bring us closer to each other and help us come together as a community.
Humans are wired for music. Researchers recently discovered that we have a dedicated part of our brain for processing music, supporting the theory that it has a special, important function in our lives.
Listening to music and singing together has been shown in several studies to directly impact neuro-chemicals in the brain, many of which play a role in closeness and connection. Now new research suggests that playing music or singing together may be particularly potent in bringing about social closeness through the release of endorphins.
Through singing, drumming, and dancing—all resulted in participants having higher pain thresholds (a proxy measure for increased endorphin release in the brain) in comparison to listening to music alone. In addition, the performance of music resulted in greater positive emotion, suggesting one pathway through which people feel closer to one another when playing music together is through endorphin release.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Pain, People, Music, Feeling

“Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame.”

W.B. Yeats The Land of Heart's Desire

Source: The Land of Heart's Desire

World, Mountain

“Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Love, Beauty

“Your cold blood cannot be worked into a fever; your veins are full of ice water; but mine are boiling, and the sight of such chillness makes them dance.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Source: Wuthering Heights

Water

“We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“Note to self: While on the treadmill you may lip-sync to the songs on your iPod but DO NOT dance along. You look like an idiot.”

Chris Colfer (1990) actor, singer, book author

Personal Quotes 2009–2012

“The living world is not the harsh domain of classical Darwinism, where each struggle against all, with every species, every organism and every gene competing for advantage against every other. Organisms are not skin-enclosed selfish entities, and competition is never unfettered. Life evolves, as does the universe itself, in a 'sacred dance' with an underlying field. This makes living beings into elements in a vast network of intimate relations that embraces the entire biosphere itself an interconnected element within the wider connections that reach into the cosmos.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/14108295.alexis_karpouzos?page=2

Selfishness, Universe, Relation ships, World

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Pain, People, Music, Feeling

“And to be merry best becomes you; for, out of question, you were born in
a merry hour.
BEATRICE
No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there
was a star danced, and under that was I born.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Star, Question

“We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

" The Secret Sits http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-secret-sits/" (1942) 1940s

Secret

“Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Sense, Speed, Funny

“Big Brother isn’t watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you’re awake. He’s making sure you’re always distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 3
Context: Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you're awake. He's making sure you're always distracted. He's making sure you're fully absorbed. He's making sure your imagination withers. Until it's as useful as your appendix. He's making sure your attention is always filled. And this being fed, it's worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what's in your mind. With everyone's imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.

Business, Singing

“Somebody just gave me a shower radio. Thanks a lot. Do you really want music in the shower? I guess there's no better place to dance than a slick surface next to a glass door.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

Music

“Girl, boy or dancing bear, you're the finest page-the finest squire-to-be-at court." (Jon to Alanna)”

Tamora Pierce book Alanna: The First Adventure

Source: Alanna: The First Adventure

Girl, Boy

“I don't want people who want to dance, I want people who have to dance.”

George Balanchine (1904–1983) Georgian choreographer, dancer and ballet master (1904-1983)

People

“It got so that when he closed his eyes, letters and words danced in his mind. He thought of little else during that time.”

Christopher Paolini book Eragon

Source: Eragon

Time

“If you have time to chatter,
Read books.

If you have time to read,
Walk into mountain, desert and ocean.

If you have time to walk,
Sing songs and dance.

If you have time to dance,
Sit quietly, you happy, lucky idiot.”

Nanao Sakaki (1923–2008) Japanese poet

Books, Mountain, Singing, Time

“Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

Passion

“The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.”

Chinua Achebe book Arrow of God

Arrow of God (1988)

World

“When a photon comes down, it interacts with electrons throughout the glass, not just on the surface. The photon and electrons do some kind of dance, the net result of which is the same as if the photon hit only on the surface.”

Richard Feynman book QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter

Source: QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (1985), p. 17

“I would not let her work until she was eighteen, and believe me, since the time she was being strolled down the street in her stroller, people were saying, “Can I use her in my commercial? Can I put her in my movie?” “No!” But I did let her take any class that she wanted to take. Singing, acting, dancing…”

Michelle Phillips (1944) Singer, actress

On raising her daughter, Chynna Philips, The Huffington Post (August 25, 2016)

People, Singing, Time

“I'm the interpreter. I'm the one who takes your words and brings them to life. I was trained to sing and dance and laugh, and that's what I want to do.”

Aaliyah (1979–2001) American singer, actress and model

Attributed

Life, Singing, Training

“On Saturday night, I would see men lusting after half-naked girls dancing at the carnival, and on Sunday morning when I was playing organ for tent-show evangelists at the other end of the carnival lot, I would see these same men sitting in the pews with their wives and children, asking God to forgive them and purge them of carnal desires. And the next Saturday they'd be back at the carnival or some other place of indulgence. I knew then that the Christian church thrives on hypocrisy, and that man's carnal nature will out no matter how much it is purged or scoured by any white-light religion.”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

As quoted in the Introduction by Burton H. Wolfe
The Satanic Bible (1969)

Men, God, Children, Religion

“Dancing in Tijuana when I was 13 — that was my "summer camp." How else do you think I could keep up with Fred Astaire when I was 19?”

Rita Hayworth (1918–1987) American actress, dancer and director

As quoted in New York Times (25 October 1970)

Thinking, Summer

“Susie got your number
And Susie ain't your friend
Look who took you under
With seven inches in
Blood is on the dance floor
Blood is on the knife
Susie's got your number
And Susie says it's right.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Blood on the Dance Floor (1997)

“Yeah, I think James Brown is a genius you know, when he's with the Famous Flames, unbelievable. I used to watch him on television and I used to get angry at the cameraman because whenever he would really start to dance they would be on a close-up so I couldn't see his feet. I'd shout "show him show him," so I could watch and learn.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

On watching James Brown as a young child.
Televised Interview with Oprah Winfrey (1993)

Thinking, Learning

“Let's dance, let's shout!
Shake your body down to the ground.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground) (co-written with Randy Jackson)
Destiny (1977)

“She was more like a beauty queen from a movie scene,
I said, 'Don't mind, but what do you mean I am the one,
Who will dance, on the floor, in the round?”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Thriller (1982)

Beauty

“Sex is like a beautiful meeting of genitalia. It's the dance of love between a penis and vagina.”

Snoop Dogg (1971) American rapper, singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor

Interview with BASE Magazine (April 2005).

Love, Beauty, Sex

“It's true that I have loved,
And gladly would again;
But sad heart, and famished belly
Not even partly satisfied
Force me away from paths of love.
And so, let someone else take over
Who has tucked away more food –
Dancing is for men of nobler girth.”

Francois Villon book Le Testament

Bien est verté que j'ay amé
Et ameroie voulentiers;
Mais triste cuer, ventre affamé
Qui n'est rassasié au tiers
M'oste des amoureux sentiers.
Au fort, quelqu'ung s'en recompence,
Qui est ramply sur les chantiers!
Car la dance vient de la pance.
Source: Le Grand Testament (The Great Testament) (1461), Line 193.

Love, Men, Sadness, Food

“I stand at the seashore, alone, and start to think.
There are the rushing waves
mountains of molecules
each stupidly minding its own business
trillions apart
yet forming white surf in unison.Ages on ages
before any eyes could see
year after year
thunderously pounding the shore as now.
For whom, for what?
On a dead planet
with no life to entertain.Never at rest
tortured by energy
wasted prodigiously by the sun
poured into space.
A mite makes the sea roar. Deep in the sea
all molecules repeat
the patterns of one another
till complex new ones are formed.
They make others like themselves
and a new dance starts.Growing in size and complexity
living things
masses of atoms
DNA, protein
dancing a pattern ever more intricate.Out of the cradle
onto dry land
here it is
standing:
atoms with consciousness;
matter with curiosity.Stands at the sea,
wonders at wondering: I
a universe of atoms
an atom in the universe.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

The Value of Science (1955)

Life, Age, Mountain, Business

“Science is never finished because the human mind only uses a small portion of its capacity, and man's exploration of his world is also limited. If we look at this tree outside whose roots search beneath the pavement for water, or a flower which sends its sweet smell to the pollinating bees, or even our own selves and the inner forces that drive us to act, we can see that we all dance to a mysterious tune, and the piper who plays this melody from an inscrutable distance—whatever name we give him—Creative Force, or God—escapes all book knowledge.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 14

God, Books, World, Search

“Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing, sooner than of war.”

Homér Iliad

A misquotation http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2009-August/092648.html of: Πάντων μὲν κόρος ἐστὶ καὶ ὕπνου καὶ φιλότητος μολπῆς τε γλυκερῆς καὶ ἀμύμονος ὀρχηθμοῖο, τῶν πέρ τις καὶ μᾶλλον ἐέλδεται ἐξ ἔρον εἷναι ἢ πολέμου· Τρῶες δὲ μάχης ἀκόρητοι ἔασιν. Men get Their fill of all things, of sleep and love, sweet song And flawless dancing, and most men like these things Much better than war. Only Trojans are always Thirsty for blood! Iliad, XIII, 636–639 (tr. Ennis Rees) The misquotation implies that an overweening love of war was the norm, whereas the real quote decries the Trojans as inhumane for keeping the war going. Misattributed

Singing, Sleep, War, Love

“I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you have still chaos in you.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Variant: One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Star, Birth

“He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Learning, Flying

“It is sweet to dance to violins
When Love and Life are fair:
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
Is delicate and rare:
But it is not sweet with nimble feet
To dance upon the air!”

Oscar Wilde book The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Pt. II, st. 9
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

Love, Life

“She laughed and danced with the thought of death in her heart.”

Hans Christian Andersen book The Little Mermaid

Source: The Little Mermaid

Death, Heart

“For truth to tell, dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education: dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with pen- that one must learn how to write”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Twilight of the Idols

Variant: Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?
Source: Twilight of the Idols

Truth, Education, Idea, Learning

“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Music, Star

“Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig. (150)”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

“I would rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Collected Poems (1938) New Poems 22
Variant: I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

Star, Bird, Learning, Singing

“When they see us dance. When they see how you look at me. When they see how I smile at you.”

Philippa Gregory book The Other Boleyn Girl

Source: The Other Boleyn Girl

Smile

“If you're skating on thin ice, you might as well dance.”

Anita Shreve (1946–2018) American writer

Source: Where or When

“See with your soul and not your eyes
because to dance with the beasts you
must penetrate their disguise.”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Soul

“I have learned to walk: since then I have run. I have learned to fly: since then I do not have to be pushed in order to move.

Now I am nimble, now I fly, now I see myself under myself, now a god dances within me.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

God, Learning, Flying

“I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.”

Aleister Crowley book The Book of Lies

45 : Chinese Music
Source: The Book of Lies (1913)

Faith, Night

“But here there was only hot swing music and liquor, dance halls, ban, and movies, and sex that hung in the gloom like a chandelier and flooded the world with brief, deceptive rainbows.”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Source: The Glass Menagerie

World, Music, Sex

“In streams of light I clearly saw
The dust you seldom see,
Out of which the Nameless makes
A Name for one like me…
All busy in the sunlight
The flecks did float and dance,
And I was tumbled up with them
In formless circumstance.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Business, Light

“Why am I afraid to dance, I who love music and rhythm and grace and song and laughter? Why am I afraid to live, I who love life and the beauty of flesh and the living colors of the earth and sky and sea? Why am I afraid to love, I who love love?”

Eugene O'Neill (1888–1953) American playwright, and Nobel laureate in Literature

Source: The Great God Brown and Other Plays

Love, Life, Beauty, Music

“The Devil pulls the strings which make us dance;
We find delight in the most loathsome things;
Some furtherance of Hell each new day brings,
And yet we feel no horror in that rank advance.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Feeling, Hell

“My 'morals' were sound, even a bit puritanic, but when a hidebound old deacon inveighed against dancing I rebelled. By the time of graduation I was still a 'believer' in orthodox religion, but had strong questions which were encouraged at Harvard. In Germany I became a freethinker and when I came to teach at an orthodox Methodist Negro school I was soon regarded with suspicion, especially when I refused to lead the students in public prayer. When I became head of a department at Atlanta, the engagement was held up because again I balked at leading in prayer. I refused to teach Sunday school. When Archdeacon Henry Phillips, my last rector, died, I flatly refused again to join any church or sign any church creed. From my 30th year on I have increasingly regarded the church as an institution which defended such evils as slavery, color caste, exploitation of labor and war..”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

Source: The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century

War, School, Religion, Color

“The fight is won or lost far away from the witnesses, behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road; long before I dance under those lights.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Back To Work, Light, Fight

“Not hammer-strokes, but dance of the water, sings the pebbles into perfection.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Water, Singing, Perfection

“Beware, my body and my soul, beware above all of crossing your arms and assuming the sterile attitude of the spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of griefs is not a proscenium, and a man who wails is not a dancing bear.”

Aimé Césaire (1913–2008) Martiniquais politician

Source: Notebook of a Return to the Native Land

Life, Soul, Sea

“She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Sea

“I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; Garlands from window to window; Golden chains from star to star… And I dance.”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

Source: Complete Works

Star

“Work like you don't need the money. Dance like no one is watching. And love like you've never been hurt.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Love, Money, Hurt

“My day is done, and I am like a boat drawn on the beach, listening to the dance-music of the tide in the evening.”

Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds

Source: Stray Birds

Music

“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Star, Birth

“Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

“Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

45 The Gardener http://www.spiritualbee.com/love-poems-by-tagore/ (1915)

Positive, Life, Time

“When you dance with the devil, it might as well be a devil who can give you your own corner of hell to rule.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Bullet

Source: Bullet

Hell

“I'm a moldy moldy man
I'm moldy thru and thru
I'm a moldy moldy man
You would not think it true
I'm moldy til my eyeballs
I'm moldy til my toe
I will not dance I shyballs
I'm such a humble Joe.”

John Lennon book In His Own Write

Source: In His Own Write

Thinking

“You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We're all part of the same compost heap. We're all singing, all dancing crap of the world.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

World, Beauty, Singing, Parting

“Dance is the hidden language of the soul, of the body.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

New York Times interview (1985)
Context: To me, the body says what words cannot. I believe that dance was the first art. A philosopher has said that dance and architecture were the first arts. I believe that dance was first because it's gesture, it's communication. That doesn't mean it's telling a story, but it means it's communicating a feeling, a sensation to people.
Dance is the hidden language of the soul, of the body. And it's partly the language that we don't want to show.

Soul

“Because some stories end, but old stories go on, and you gotta dance to the music if you want to stay ahead”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

Music

“There was a star danced, and under that was I born.”

William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing

Source: Much Ado About Nothing

Star

“And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Truth, Falseness

“May today there be peace within.

May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.

May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.

May you be content knowing you are a child of God.

Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.

It is there for each and every one of us.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

Love, God, Peace, Faith

“It all sounds rather naive and sentimental to be talking about children laughing and dancing and singing together when we all know perfectly well that what children do in real life is snarl and take drugs.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Life, Children, Singing

“We are dancing in the hollow of nothingness. We are one flesh, but separated like stars.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Star

“These paper boats of mine are meant to dance on the ripples of hours, and not reach any destination.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

“She'd become a governess. It was one of the few jobs a known lady could do.
And she'd taken to it well. She'd sworn that if she did indeed ever find
herself dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps she'd beat herself to death with her own umbrella.”

Terry Pratchett book Hogfather

Source: Hogfather

Death

“All around you, people will be tiptoeing through life, just to arrive at death safely. But dear children, do not tiptoe. Run, hop, skip, or dance, just don't tiptoe.”

Shane Claiborne (1975) American activist

Life, Death, Children, People

“And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon.”

Edward Lear The Owl and the Pussycat

Source: The Owl and the Pussycat

Light

“How small life is here
and how big nothingness.
The sky, tired of light,
has given everything to the snow.

The two trees bow
their heads to each other.
Clouds cross the world’s
silence in a circle dance”

Robert Walser (1878–1956) Swiss writer

Source: Oppressive Light: Selected Poems by Robert Walser

Life, World, Tree, Light

“Without music and dance, life is a journey through a desert.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

Life, Music

“All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing.”

Molière (1622–1673) French playwright and actor

Books, History, Failure

“Every day brings a chance for you to draw in a breath, kick off your shoes, and dance.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Moving On, Shoe, Chance, Drawing

“O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?”

W.B. Yeats book The Tower

Among School Children http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1437/, st. 8 The Tower (1928) Context: Labour is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul. Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?

Music