Quotes about sound
page 10

Ilana Mercer photo

“The sounds emanating from the uterine core of the Democratic Party are the subhuman grunts and growls one hears from animals in estrus or mid-feed. Something is terribly wrong with them.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"The Party of Man-Haters," https://townhall.com/columnists/ilanamercer/2018/10/19/the-party-of-manhaters-n2530054 Townhall.com, October 19, 2018
2010s, 2018

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain photo

“The momentous meaning of this occasion impressed me deeply. I resolved to mark it by some token of recognition, which could be no other than a salute of arms. Well aware of the responsibility assumed, and of the criticisms that would follow, as the sequel proved, nothing of that kind could move me in the least. The act could be defended, if needful, by the suggestion that such a salute was not to the cause for which the flag of the Confederacy stood, but to its going down before the flag of the Union. My main reason, however, was one for which I sought no authority nor asked forgiveness. Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond;—was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured? Instructions had been given; and when the head of each division column comes opposite our group, our bugle sounds the signal and instantly our whole line from right to left, regiment by regiment in succession, gives the soldier's salutation, from the "order arms" to the old "carry"—the marching salute. Gordon at the head of the column, riding with heavy spirit and downcast face, catches the sound of shifting arms, looks up, and, taking the meaning, wheels superbly, making with himself and his horse one uplifted figure, with profound salutation as he drops the point of his sword to the boot toe; then facing to his own command, gives word for his successive brigades to pass us with the same position of the manual, honor answering honor. On our part not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; not a cheer, nor word nor whisper of vain-glorying, nor motion of man standing again at the order, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of the dead!”

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1828–1914) Union Army general and Medal of Honor recipient

The Passing of the Armies: An account of the Army of the Potomac, based upon personal reminiscences of the Fifth Army Corps (1915), p. 260

Fenton Johnson photo
Miley Cyrus photo

“I've already fallen in love with 20 guys since I've been here. The accents sound so intelligent. I love the way the guys are so classy and wear trench coats.”

Miley Cyrus (1992) American actor and singer-songwriter

Vancouver Sun http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/arts/story.html?id=15a746f1-2e8b-40d4-8185-0bd221d2a442 (October 15, 2008)

Robert A. Heinlein photo
Francis Bacon photo
Chris Cornell photo
Donald J. Trump photo
David Spade photo

“Myspace is a great way to keep in touch with friends whom you don't care enough about to actually have a conversation with. Why bother calling to say 'How are you?' when you can just surf their page and post an mpeg of a guy farting on his cat?
[Myspace is] this website where young people can post pictures and info about themselves for anyone to see. When I first heard about it, I thought to myself, 'Finally a Yellow Pages for sex offenders. Why didn't I think of that?'
The most popular (American Idol) contestants have been: white people that sound black, young people that sound old, and straight guys that sound gay.
The final five are exactly like The Breakfast Club: There's the rebel(Chris Daughtry), the princess (Katharine McPhee), the nerd (Elliot Yamin), the weirdo (Paris Bennett)… and of course, the principal (Taylor Hicks). What? He's old!
(Ryan Phillippe & Reese Witherspoon) Broke up, (Kid Rock & Pamela Anderson) broke up, (Vince Vaughn & Jennifer Aniston) broke up, (Kate Moss & Pete Doherty) coked up. They said it wouldn't last; not the marriage, the stash. 007,.08, 1.2, 215. Came out, came out, (Tom Brady and Bridget Moynihan) came in, (Brady and Gisele Bündchen) came in. Hates Jews, went to rehab, loves Jews; hates gays, went to rehab, now loves gays; hates blacks, didn't go to rehab, still hates blacks. 'Father Knows Best', (with Britney Spears) 'Mad About You,' (Spears without panties) 'Leave It to Beaver.' New father, new father, new father? R. I. P., D. U. I., P. O. W. 'You're a hypocrite,' 'you're fat,' 'you're rude,' 'you're ugly,' whoa, whoa, whoa, guys. Stop fighting, you're both right. Booze, pot, Vicodin, crack, booze, pot, Vicodin, and crack.”

David Spade (1964) American stand-up comedian

The Showbiz Show with David Spade

Dylan Moran photo
Wassily Kandinsky photo

“First I will make different color tests: I will study the dark – deep blue, deep violet, deep dirty green, etc. Often I see the colors before my eyes. Sometimes I imitate with my lips the deep sounds of the trumpet – then I see various deep mixtures which the word is uncapable od conceiving and which the palette can only feebly reproduce.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote in Kandinsky's letter to Gabriele Münter, 1915; as cited in Schönberg and Kandinsky: An Historic Encounter, by Klaus Kropfinger; edited by Konrad Boehmer; published by Routledge (imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informal company), 2003, p. 16 note 54
1910 - 1915

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis photo

“The one thing I do not want to be called is First Lady. It sounds like a saddle horse.”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

Advice to her secretary; quoted inThe Kennedys (1984) by Peter Collier and David Horowitz

Lauren Anderson (model) photo

“If people thought about the environmental destruction, cruelty to animals, and unsavory-sounding body parts that go into meat hot dogs, they’d be switching to veggie hot dogs faster than you can say ‘inconvenient truth.”

Lauren Anderson (model) (1980) American model

"Playmate to Politicians: Take a Bite (and Cool Down)", PETA.org (17 July 2008) https://www.peta.org/blog/playmate-politicians-take-bite-cool/.

Philip K. Dick photo
Ali Shariati photo

“The sky was dark, the night was black, obscurity reigned, the gleam of the wolves eyes was the only light that came to sight, the howling of the jackal was the only sound to be heard, conspiracies were in the making while slanderers and the malicious were busily chattering”

Ali Shariati (1933–1977) Iranian academic and activist

Quote in: Ali Rahnema An Islamic Utopian: A Political Biography of Ali Shariati. (2000), p. 258
Rahnema commented that "Shariati did not believe he had any chance of returning to Ershad and evaluated his situation in a poetical and macabre fashion".

Kabir photo
Pearl S.  Buck photo

“Euthanasia is a long, smooth-sounding word, and it conceals its danger as long, smooth words do, but the danger is there, nevertheless.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

The Child Who Never Grew (1950), Ch. 2

George Biddell Airy photo
W. H. Auden photo

“Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

A misquotation of a haiku by Auden found elsewhere on this page ("Thoughts of his own death" etc.)
Misattributed
Variant: Thoughts of his own death,
like the distant roll
of thunder at a picnic.

Michael Foot photo

“The only man I knew who could make a curse sound like a caress.”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

Aneurin Bevan, Vol 1, 1962
1960s

Benny Andersson photo

“I'd hate the sound of thirty thousand people booing.”

Benny Andersson (1946) Swedish musician

After being asked if he ever gets stage fright
Interview during the 1977 Australian tour, included in "ABBA: The Movie"

Charles Darwin photo

“When the pots containing two worms which had remained quite indifferent to the sound of the piano, were placed on this instrument, and the note C in the bass clef was struck, both instantly retreated into their burrows.”

Source: The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms (1881), Chapter 1: Habits of Worms, p. 28. http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=43&itemID=F1357&viewtype=image

Peter Greenaway photo
Hans Christian Andersen photo
John Cage photo

“I remember loving sound before I ever took a music lesson. And so we make our lives by what we love.”

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

"Lecture on Nothing" (1949)
1940s

Jerome David Salinger photo
Karl Pilkington photo
Piero Scaruffi photo

“If the cop honestly felt that this was a young black man (as politically incorrect as it sounds, this is the most violent category of people in the USA) aiming a gun at him, the cop can hardly be blamed for shooting first.”

Piero Scaruffi (1955) Italian writer

Of heroes and thugs: African-American males and white cops http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/usa14.html#usa1214

Craig Ferguson photo

“Sounds like a party at Elton John's house.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

citation needed
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005–2014), Commonly repeated

Daniel Abraham photo
William Rowan Hamilton photo
Horace Walpole photo

“If a passion for freedom is not in vogue, patriots may sound the alarm till they are weary.
The Act of Habeas Corpus, by which prisoners may insist on being brought to trial within a limited time, is the corner-stone of our liberty.”

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician

Notes of 1758, published in Memoires of the Last Ten Years of the Reign of George the Second (1822), p. 226; also published as "Memoirs of the Year 1758" in Memoirs of King George II, Vol. III (1985), p. 10

Damian Pettigrew photo
Andrew Marvell photo
Devin Townsend photo
Jorge Luis Borges photo

“Nowadays, one of the churches of Tlön maintains platonically that such and such a pain, such and such a greenish-yellow colour, such and such a temperature, such and such a sound, etc., make up the only reality there is. All men, in the climactic instant of coitus, are the same man. All men who repeat one line of Shakespeare are William Shakespeare.”

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
Variant: Today, one of the churches of Tlön Platonically maintains that a certain pain, a certain greenish tint of yellow, a certain temperature, a certain sound, are the only reality. All men, in the vertiginous moment of coitus, are the same man. All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare.

Henryk Sienkiewicz photo

“Whatever way uncertainty is approached, probability is the only sound way to think about it.”

Dennis Lindley (1923–2013) British statistician

5. The Rules of Probability. p. 71.
Understanding Uncertainty (2006)

William Ellery Channing photo
Stephen King photo
Arjo Klamer photo
Eugène Delacroix photo

“.. The movement and the rustle of the branches [in the forest, while losing his attention for chasing] delights me. The clouds float past and I lift my head to follow their flight, or think about some madrigal, when a slight sound, which has been going on for a little while, rouses me slowly from my dream.; at least I turn my head and see, to my grief, a little white scut just disappearing into the thicket…”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

Quote in a letter to Delacroix' friend Achille Peron - 16 September 1819, Paris; as quoted in Eugene Delacroix – selected letters 1813 – 1863, ed. and translation Jean Stewart, art Works MFA publications, Museum of Fine Art Boston, 2001, p. 51
1815 - 1830

Alastair Reynolds photo

““Is that as bad as it sounds?” Floyd asked.
“No,” Auger said. “It’s worse. A lot worse.””

Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 30 (p. 466)

Anna Sui photo
Edith Sitwell photo
Helen Schucman photo
Paul Desmond photo

“You're beginning to sound like a cross between David Frost and David Susskind, and that is a cross I cannot bear.”

Paul Desmond (1924–1977) American jazz musician

His response to the annoying banality of an interviewer
Unsourced

Leo Igwe photo
M.I.A. photo
George William Russell photo
Burkard Schliessmann photo

“The trends that produced Schumann’s early piano works started out not so much from Weber’s refined brilliance as from Schubert’s more intimate and deeply soul-searching idiom. His creative imagination took him well beyond the harmonic sequences known until his time. He looked at the fugues and canons of earlier composers and discovered in them a Romantic principle. In the interweaving of the voices, the essence of counterpoint found its parallel in the mysterious relationships between the human psyche and exterior phenomena, which Schumann felt impelled to express. Schubert’s broad melodic lyricism has often been contrasted with Schumann’s terse, often quickly repeated motifs, and by comparison Schumann is often erroneously seen as short-winded. Yet it is precisely with these short melodic formulae that he shone his searchlight into the previously unplumbed depths of the human psyche. With them, in a complex canonic web, he wove a dense tissue of sound capable of taking in and reflecting back all the poetical character present. His actual melodies rarely have an arioso form; his harmonic system combines subtle chromatic progressions, suspensions, a rapid alternation of minor and major, and point d’orgue. The shape of Schumann’s scores is characterized by contrapuntal lines, and can at first seem opaque or confused. His music is frequently marked by martial dotted rhythms or dance-like triple time signatures. He loves to veil accented beats of the bar by teasingly intertwining two simultaneous voices in independent motion. This highly inde-pendent instrumental style is perfectly attuned to his own particular compositional idiom. After a period in which the piano had indulged in sensuous beauty of sound and brilliant coloration, in Schumann it again became a tool for conveying poetic monologues in musical terms.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings about Chopin and Schumann

Gordon Strachan photo
Neil Young photo
Athanasius of Alexandria photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Gloria Estefan photo
Edgar Froese photo
Ray Bradbury photo
Shingai Shoniwa photo
Ivo Pogorelić photo

“God is a sound people make when they're too tired to think anymore.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

Octavio Paz photo
Győző Zemplén photo

“…the ultimate objective of teaching physics is promoting a sound physical thinking and not merely tackling a list of topics.”

Győző Zemplén (1879–1916) Hungarian physicist

On the Reform of Physics Education http://www.sci-ed.org/Conference-2004/Proceedings/anett-zempl.pdf delivered 1912 at a general assembly of the Hungarian National Society of Secondary School Teachers.

John Dewey photo

“Many people did not care for Pat Buchanan's speech; it probably sounded better in the original German.”

Molly Ivins (1944–2007) American journalist

Notes from Another Country https://books.google.com/books?id=dlGDAgAAQBAJ&lpg=PT46&ots=4hYUXc8Ko7&dq=%22Notes%20from%20Another%20Country%22%20molly&pg=PT47#v=onepage&q=%22Notes%20from%20Another%20Country%22%20molly&f=false. Retrieved Dec 2, 2015.

Ervin László photo

“The description of the evolutionary trajectory of dynamical systems as irreversible, periodically chaotic, and strongly nonlinear fits certain features of the historical development of human societies. But the description of evolutionary processes, whether in nature or in history, has additional elements. These elements include such factors as the convergence of existing systems on progressively higher organizational levels, the increasingly efficient exploitation by systems of the sources of free energy in their environment, and the complexification of systems structure in states progressively further removed from thermodynamic equilibrium.
General evolution theory, based on the integration of the relevant tenets of general system theory, cybernetics, information and communication theory, chaos theory, dynamical systems theory, and nonequilibrium thermodynamics, can convey a sound understanding of the laws and dynamics that govern the evolution of complex systems in the various realms of investigation…. The basic notions of this new discipline can be developed to give an adequate account of the dynamical evolution of human societies as well. Such an account could furnish the basis of a system of knowledge better able to orient human beings and societies in their rapidly changing milieu.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

E. Laszlo et al. (1993) pp. xvii- xix; as cited in: Alexander Laszlo and Stanley Krippner (1992) " Systems Theories: Their Origins, Foundations, and Development http://archive.syntonyquest.org/elcTree/resourcesPDFs/SystemsTheory.pdf" In: J.S. Jordan (Ed.), Systems Theories and A Priori Aspects of Perception. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 1998. Ch. 3, pp. 47-74.

Charles Mingus photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Charles Stross photo
Eduardo Torroja photo
William Jennings Bryan photo
Karen Armstrong photo
Mark Ames photo
Patrick Kavanagh photo
Stephen King photo
Thomas Moore photo

“Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea!
Jehovah has triumphed—his people are free.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Sacred Songs, Sound the Loud Timbrel, st. 1.

Quirinus Kuhlmann photo

“As harsh as Love-Kiss might sound in your ears it will resonate more swetly to your heart.”

Quirinus Kuhlmann (1651–1689) German poet and mystic

Love-Kiss XL1 ' The Mutabilty of Human Affairs'
Love-Kiss XL1

Tom Baker photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo

“On a poet's lips I slept
Dreaming like a love-adept
In the sound his breathing kept.”

Fourth Spirit, Act I, l. 737
Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)

Edgar Wilson Nye photo

“The peculiar characteristic of classical music is that it is really better than it sounds.”

Edgar Wilson Nye (1850–1896) American journalist, who later became widely known as a humorist

A stand-up line quoted in 1888.
Attributed
Variant: Wagner's music is better than it sounds (attested in an obituary; see The Quote Verifier)

Douglas MacArthur photo
Christopher Golden photo
Fitz-Greene Halleck photo
Kodo Sawaki photo
Edward O. Wilson photo
Lewis Black photo
Agatha Christie photo
Edward Gibbon photo
Dejan Stojanovic photo

“Words rich in meaning can be cheap in sound effects.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Simplicity http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21390/Simplicity
From the poems written in English

“First, then, a woman will or won’t, depend on ’t;
If she will do ’t, she will; and there ’s an end on ’t.
But if she won’t, since safe and sound your trust is,
Fear is affront, and jealousy injustice.”

Aaron Hill (writer) (1685–1750) British writer

Epilogue (1735). Note: The following lines are copied from the pillar erected on the mount in the Dane John Field, Canterbury:
:Where is the man who has the power and skill
To stem the torrent of a woman’s will?
For if she will, she will, you may depend on ’t;
And if she won’t, she won’t; so there ’s an end on ’t.
The Examiner, (31 May 1829).
Zara (1735)

Basil of Caesarea photo