“What a wonderful work Wagner has done for humanity in translating the toil of life into the readable script of music! For those who seek the tale of other worlds his magic is silent; but earth-travail under his wand becomes instinct with rhythmic song to an accompaniment of the elements, and the blare and crash of the bottomless pit itself.”

Source: The Roadmender (1902), Chapter II

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "What a wonderful work Wagner has done for humanity in translating the toil of life into the readable script of music! F…" by Margaret Barber?

Margaret Barber4

English Christian writer 1869–1901

Related quotes

“Those who are willing to work, those who are willing to toil, those who are willing to sacrifice, they shall be the peaceful army that He shall lead to the conquest of the great ideal Society, which they shall build under His direction and make practicable under His inspiration; and they, perhaps more than any other proof, are the sign of the new departure, are the welcome and the heralds of the coming Teacher.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man 1923, p. 148

“An educated person is one who, through the travail of his own life, has assimilated the ideas that make him representative of his culture.”

Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American philosopher and educator

Source: Reforming Education: The Schooling of a People and Their Education Beyond Schooling (1977), p. 255

“You see demons in the eyes of the world, and the world sees a bottomless pit in yours.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: Challenger Deep

“Other people have shrubbery in their gardens. You have a bottomless pit.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

“Magic means nothing. It has the potential to connect us to something wonderful, as does any performance, but it is not wonderful in itself, for it is inseparable from the particular performance in which it is experienced. A magician who is too fast, too slow, mumbles, shouts, smells, is unlikeable or incomprehensible will unavoidably taint his magic with his personal failings.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Confessions of a Conjuror (2010)

“They have no idea what a bottomless pit of misery I am.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel (1967–2020) American author and journalist

“Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.”

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet

“God has matured. He is not the impulsive, bowelless being of the Testaments - the vehement glorymonger, with His bag of cheap carny tricks and his booming voice - the fiery huckster with his burning bushes and his wonder wands. Nowadays God knows what He wants and He knows who He wants.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Euchrid Eucrow in Cave's novel And the Ass Saw the Angel (1988)
God and religion

“That God existed before there were human beings on Earth, that He holds the entire world, believers and non-believers, in His omnipotent hand for eternity, and that He will remain enthroned on a level inaccessible to human comprehension long after the Earth and everything that is on it has gone to ruins; those who profess this faith and who, inspired by it, in veneration and complete confidence, feel secure from the dangers of life under protection of the Almighty, only those may number themselves among the truly religious.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

As quoted in God’s Laughter (1992) by Gerhard Staguhn, p. 152

“Nature herself, indeed, seems to have given music to us as a benefit, to enable us to endure labors with greater facility, for musical sounds cheer even the rower; and it is not only in those works in which the efforts of many, while some pleasing voice leads them, conspire together that music is of avail, but the toil even of people at work by themselves finds itself soothed by song, however rude.”

Quintilian (35–96) ancient Roman rhetor

H. E. Butler's translation:
Indeed nature itself seems to have given music as a boon to men to lighten the strain of labour: even the rower in the galleys is cheered to effort by song. Nor is this function of music confined to cases where the efforts of a number are given union by the sound of some sweet voice that sets the tune, but even solitary workers find solace at their toil in artless song.
Book I, Chapter X, 16
De Institutione Oratoria (c. 95 AD)
Original: (la) Atque eam natura ipsa videtur ad tolerandos facilius labores velut muneri nobis dedisse, si quidem et remigem cantus hortatur; nec solum in iis operibus in quibus plurium conatus praeeunte aliqua iucunda voce conspirat, sed etiam singulorum fatigatio quamlibet se rudi modulatione solatur.

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Margaret Barber4

Related quotes

Related topics