Optimism (1903)
Context: Let pessimism once take hold of the mind, and life is all topsy-turvy, all vanity and vexation of spirit. There is no cure for individual or social disorder, except in forgetfulness and annihilation. "Let us eat, drink and be merry," says the pessimist, "for to-morrow we die." If I regarded my life from the point of view of the pessimist, I should be undone. I should seek in vain for the light that does not visit my eyes and the music that does not ring in my ears. I should beg night and day and never be satisfied. I should sit apart in awful solitude, a prey to fear and despair. But since I consider it a duty to myself and to others to be happy, I escape a misery worse than any physical deprivation.
“There is joy in self-forgetfulness. So I try to make the light in others' eyes my sun, the music in others' ears my symphony, the smile on others' lips my happiness.”
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Helen Keller 156
American author and political activist 1880–1968Related quotes
“My wife, my child, my music, Nature and the sun; they are my happiness.”
written on the sketches for his Domestic Symphony. Charles Youmans, Mahler and Strauss in Dialogue, Indiana University press (2016), found on page 60.
Other sources
Peter Quince at the Clavier (1915)
Context: Just as my fingers on these keys Make music, so the self-same sounds On my spirit make a music, too. Music is feeling, then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel,
Here in this room, desiring you,
Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,
Is music.
Adele in Rolling Stone http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/adele-opens-up-about-her-inspirations-looks-and-stage-fright-20120210, April 28, 2011.
Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, Andre Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism; 1924)
And, of course, I did.
Quoted in Monteux, Doris G (1965). It's All in the Music: The Life and Work of Pierre Monteux. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. OCLC 604146, p. 91
On first hearing The Rite of Spring