Quotes about sound
page 23

Oliver Goldsmith photo
Kurt Schwitters photo
N. K. Jemisin photo

“Love betrayed has an entirely different sound from hatred outright.”

Source: The Broken Kingdoms (2011), Chapter 3 “Gods and Corpses” (oil on canvas) (p. 58)

Conrad Aiken photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Clay Aiken photo
David Brewster photo
Ray Comfort photo

“… I think I'm a pig: Pigs have got eyes, pigs have got mouths, pigs have got teeth, I've got friends who eat like pigs, I sound like a pig when I sleep.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

AronRa vs Ray Comfort (September 17th, 2012), Radio Paul's Radio Rants

Fred Astaire photo
Willie Nelson photo
Will Cuppy photo

“Taking elephants across the Alps is not as much fun as it sounds. The Alps are difficult enough when alone, and elephants are peculiarly fitted for not crossing them.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Hannibal

“Let me remind you that science is not necessarily wisdom. To know, is not the sole nor even the highest office of the intellect; and it loses all its glory unless it act in furtherance of the great end of man's life. That end is, as both reason and revelation unite in telling us, to acquire the feelings and habits that will lead us to love and seek what is good in all its forms, and guide us by following its traces to the first Great Cause of all, where only we find it pure and unclouded.
If science be cultivated in congruity with this, it is the most precious possession we can have— the most divine endowment. But if it be perverted to minister to any wicked or ignoble purpose — if it even be permitted to take too absolute a hold of the mind, or overshadow that which should be paramount over all, the perception of right, the sense of Duty — if it does not increase in us the consciousness of an Almighty and All-beneficent presence, — it lowers instead of raising us in the great scale of existence.
This, however, it can never do but by our fault. All its tendencies are heavenward; every new fact which it reveals is a ray from the origin of light, which leads us to its source. If any think otherwise, their knowledge is imperfect, or their understanding warped, or darkened by their passions. The book of nature is, like that of revelation, written by God, and therefore cannot contradict it; both we are unable to read through all their extent, and therefore should neither wonder nor be alarmed if at times we miss the pages which reconcile any seeming inconsistence. In both, too, we may fail to interpret rightly that which is recorded; but be assured, if we search them in quest of truth alone, each will bear witness to the other, — and physical knowledge, instead of being hostile to religion, will be found its most powerful ally, its most useful servant. Many, I know, think otherwise; and because attempts have occasionally been made to draw from astronomy, from geology, from the modes of the growth and formation of animals and plants, arguments against the divine origin of the sacred Scripture, or even to substitute for the creative will of an intelligent first cause the blind and casual evolution of some agency of a material system, they would reject their study as fraught with danger. In this I must express my deep conviction that they do injury to that very cause which they think they are serving.
Time will not let me touch further on the cavils and errors in question; and besides they have been often fully answered. I will only say, that I am here surrounded by many, matchless in the sciences which are supposed so dangerous, and not less conspicuous for truth and piety. If they find no discord between faith and knowledge, why should you or any suppose it to exist? On the contrary, they cannot be well separated. We must know that God is, before we can confess Him; we must know that He is wise and powerful before we can trust in Him, — that He is good before we can love Him. All these attributes, the study of His works had made known before He gave that more perfect knowledge of himself with which we are blessed. Among the Semitic tribes his names betoken exalted nature and resistless power; among the Hellenic races they denote his wisdom; but that which we inherit from our northern ancestors denotes his goodness. All these the more perfect researches of modern science bring out in ever-increasing splendour, and I cannot conceive anything that more effectually brings home to the mind the absolute omnipresence of the Deity than high physical knowledge. I fear I have too long trespassed on your patience, yet let me point out to you a few examples.
What can fill us with an overwhelming sense of His infinite wisdom like the telescope? As you sound with it the fathomless abyss of stars, till all measure of distances seems to fail and imagination alone gauges the distance; yet even there as here is the same divine harmony of forces, the same perfect conservation of systems, which the being able to trace in the pages of Newton or Laplace makes us feel as if we were more than men. If it is such a triumph of intellect to trace this law of the universe, how transcendent must that Greatest over all be, in which it and many like it, have their existence! That instrument tells us that the globe which we inhabit is but a speck, the existence of which cannot be perceived beyond our system. Can we then hope that in this immensity of worlds we shall not be overlooked? The microscope will answer. If the telescope lead to one verge of infinity, it brings us to the other; and shows us that down in the very twilight of visibility the living points which it discloses are fashioned with the most finished perfection, — that the most marvellous contrivances minister to their preservation and their enjoyment, — that as nothing is too vast for the Creator's control, so nothing is too minute or trifling for His care. At every turn the philosopher meets facts which show that man's Creator is also his Father, — things which seem to contain a special provision for his use and his happiness : but I will take only two, from their special relation to this very district. Is it possible to consider the properties which distinguish iron from other metals without a conviction that those qualities were given to it that it might be useful to man, whatever other purposes might be answered by them. That it should. be ductile and plastic while influenced by heat, capable of being welded, and yet by a slight chemical change capable of adamantine hardness, — and that the metal which alone possesses properties so precious should be the most abundant of all, — must seem, as it is, a miracle of bounty. And not less marvellous is the prescient kindness which stored up in your coalfields the exuberant vegetation of the ancient world, under circumstances which preserved this precious magazine of wealth and power, not merely till He had placed on earth beings who would use it, but even to a late period of their existence, lest the element that was to develope to the utmost their civilization and energy migbt be wasted or abused.
But I must conclude with this summary of all which I would wish to impress on your minds—* that the more we know His works the nearer we are to Him. Such knowledge pleases Him; it is bright and holy, it is our purest happiness here, and will assuredly follow us into another life if rightly sought in this. May He guide us in its pursuit; and in particular, may this meeting which I have attempted to open in His name, be successful and prosperous, so that in future years they who follow me in this high office may refer to it as one to be remembered with unmixed satisfaction.”

Robinson in his 1849 adress, as quoted in the Report of the Nineteenth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science https://archive.org/stream/report36sciegoog#page/n50/mode/2up, London, 1850.

Jean Metzinger photo
Karen Kwiatkowski photo

“It wasn't intelligence — it was propaganda. They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together.”

Karen Kwiatkowski (1960) retired military officer and author

Interview by Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest, " The Lie Factory http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/01/12_405.html", Mother Jones, January/February 2004.

Elizabeth May photo
Christiaan Barnard photo
Roger Manganelli photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
J. William Fulbright photo
Howard Bloom photo
Gloria Estefan photo

“Dad joined the US Army by this point [1964], and initially he was stationed in Texas and then South Carolina. But the Vietnam war brought our normal life to an end. Once again, Dad was gone. Communications were very basic back then: Dad couldn't just pick up a cellphone and let us know he was okay. Months would go by without a letter or anything. Eventually he bought two tape recorders -- one he kept with him and one for our house. Dad used to talk into the recorder and send the tapes home. Then we would gather round our machine and tell Dad stories. And I would sing. I still have all the tapes, but I can't listen to them. It hurts too much. After Dad came back from Nam, he wasn't well. He'd been poisoned by Agent Orange and needed quite a lot of looking after. Mum was busy trying to get her Cuban qualifications revalidated by a US university, so I had to take care of Dad and my little sister [Becky]. It was tough. Toward the end, Dad was too far gone and he didn't really know what was hapening around him. I joined Miami Sound Machine in 1975 and we were getting quite successful, but Dad didn't even know who I was. He had to be moved to the hospital. On my wedding day in 1978 [September 2] I went to visit him, still wearing my wedding dress. That was the last time that he said my name. Dad died in 1980, but he touches my life every day. On my last album [Unwrapped] I did a lot of writing while I was looking at a picture of him in his younger days -- so happy and in the prime of his life. I'm not sure if he sees me, but I can feel him all around me. I hope he knows that I am so very proud of him.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

The [London] Sunday Times (November 17, 2006)
2007, 2008

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge photo
Mikhail Bakhtin photo
Elton John photo

“We'll kill the fatted calf tonight, so stick around,
You're gonna hear electric music, solid walls of sound.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Bennie and the Jets
Song lyrics, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973)

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo

“When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

D 66
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook D (1773-1775)

Mark Heard photo

“Sounds are indeed like colors, and my hunger for a truer palette of colors grows day to day.”

Mark Heard (1951–1992) American musician and record producer

Life in the Industry: A Musician's Diary

John Fante photo
Jeremy Clarkson photo
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo

“The sweeter sound of woman’s praise.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Lines written in August, 1847

Alexander McCall Smith photo
John Milton photo

“Oft, on a plat of rising ground,
I hear the far-off curfew sound
Over some wide-watered shore,
Swinging low with sullen roar.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Source: Il Penseroso (1631), Line 73

Mario Cuomo photo

“I am a trial lawyer…. Matilda says that at dinner on a good day I sound like an affidavit.”

Mario Cuomo (1932–2015) American politician, Governor of New York

New York Times (10 November 1986)

Ron Paul photo
Elaine Paige photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Madhuri Dixit photo
Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery photo

“It is by self-reliance, humanly speaking, by the independence which has been the motive and impelling force of our race, that the Scots have thriven in India and in Canada, in Australia and New Zealand, and even in England, where at different times they were banned. As things are we in Scotland do not take much or even ask much from the State, but the State invites us every day to lean upon it. I seem hear the wheedling and alluring whisper, "Sound you may be; we bid you be a cripple. Do you see? Be blind. Do you hear? Be deaf. Do you walk? Be not venturesome; here is a crutch for one arm. When you get accustomed to it you will soon want another, the sooner the better." The strongest man, if encouraged, may soon accustom himself to the methods of an invalid; he may train himself to totter or to be fed with a spoon. The ancient sculptors represent Hercules leaning on his club; our modern Hercules would have his club elongated and duplicated and resting under his arms. (Laughter.) The lesson of our Scottish teaching was "Level up"; the cry of modern civilization is "Level down; let the Government have a finger in every pie," probing, propping, disturbing. ("Hear, hear," and laughter.) Every day the area for initiative is being narrowed, every day the standing ground for self-reliance is being undermined, every day the public infringes, with the best intentions, no doubt, on the individual. The nation is being taken into custody by the State. Perhaps the current cannot now be stemmed; agitation or protest may be alike unavailing; the world rolls on, it may be part of its destiny, a necessary phase in its long evolution, a stage in its blind, toilsome progress to an invisible goal. I neither affirm nor deny. All in the long run is doubtless for the best; but, speaking as a Scotsman to Scotsmen, I plead for our historical character, for the maintenance of those sterling national qualities which have meant so much to Scotland in the past.”

Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) British politician

Cheers.
Speech to Glasgow University (12 June 1908), reported in The Times (13 June 1908), p. 12.

Lauren Bacall photo
Stephen Miller photo
Karlheinz Stockhausen photo

“New methods change the experience, and new experiences change man. Whenever we hear sounds, we are changed, we are no longer the same, and this is more the case when we hear organized sounds; music.”

Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928–2007) German composer

http://www.ubu.com/film/stockhausen_tuning.html
Tuning In (1981) BBC documentary on Stockhausen.
Attributed

“ Every individual word in a passage or poetry can no more be said to denote some specific referent than does every brush mark, every line in a painting have its counterpart in reality. The writer or speaker does not communicate his thoughts to us; he communicates a representation for carrying out, this function under the severe discipline of using the only materials he has, sound and gesture. Speech is like painting, a representation made out of given materials -- sound or paint. The function of speech is to stimulate and set up thoughts in us having correspondence with the speaker's desires; he has then communicated with us. But he has not transmitted a copy of his thoughts, a photograph, but only a stream of speech -- a substitute made from the unpromising material of sound. The artist, the sculptor, the caricaturist, the composer are akin in this [fact that they have not transmitted a copy of their thoughts], that they express (make representations of) their thoughts using chosen, limited materials. They make the "best" representations, within these self-imposed constraints. A child who builds models of a house, or a train, using only a few colored bricks, is essentially engaged in the same creative task.* Metaphors can play a most forceful role, by importing ideas through a vehicle language, setting up what are purely linguistic associations (we speak of "heavy burden of taxation," "being in a rut"). The imported concepts are, to some extent, artificial in their contexts, and they are by no means universal among different cultures. For instance, the concepts of cleanliness and washing are used within Christendom to imply "freedom from sin." We Westerners speak of the mind's eye, but this idea is unknown amongst the Chinese. that is, we are looking at it with the eyes of our English-speaking culture. A grammar book may help us to decipher the text more thoroughly, and help us comprehend something of the language structure, but we may never fully understand if we are not bred in the culture and society that has modeled and shaped the language. (p. 74)”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

See Gombrich in reference 348
On Human Communication (1957), Language: Science and Aesthetics

Alfred North Whitehead photo
Edward R. Murrow photo

“… memories that never ride anything but sound waves.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 46

Paul Gauguin photo

“[In] painting…all sensations are condensed, everyone…with a single glance [has] his soul invaded by the most profound recollections…everything is summed up in one instant. Like music, it acts on the soul through the intermediary of the senses: harmonious colors correspond to the harmonies of sound.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Quote from Gauguin's unfinished essay 'Notes Synthetiques', published in the July / September 1910 issue of ' Vers et Prose' XXII, pp. 51-55, as cited in: Shannon N. Pritchard, Gino Severini and the symbolist aesthetics of his futurist dance imagery, 1910-1915 https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/pritchard_shannon_n_200305_ma.pdf Diss. uga, 2003, p. 23
Gauguin's essay 'Notes Synthetiques' was written in Pont -Aven in 1888 and left incomplete. His essay was first published in 'Vers et Prose' XXII
1890s - 1910s

George W. Bush photo
Shashi Tharoor photo
Yukio Mishima photo
Tenzin Gyatso photo

“Thousands — millions and billions — of animals are killed for food. That is very sad. We human beings can live without meat, especially in our modern world. We have a great variety of vegetables and other supplementary foods, so we have the capacity and the responsibility to save billions of lives. I have seen many individuals and groups promoting animal rights and following a vegetarian diet. This is excellent. Certain killing is purely a "luxury." … But perhaps the saddest is factory farming. The poor animals there really suffer. I once visited a poultry farm in Japan where they keep 200,000 hens for two years just for their eggs. During those two years, they are prisoners. Then after two years, when they are no longer productive, the hens are sold. That is really shocking, really sad. We must support those who are attempting to reduce that kind of unfair treatment. An Indian friend told me that his young daughter has been arguing with him that it is better to serve one cow to ten people than to serve chicken or other small animals, since more lives would be involved. In the Indian tradition, beef is always avoided, but I think there is some logic to her argument. Shrimp, for example, are very small. For one plate, many lives must be sacrificed. To me, this is not at all delicious. I find it really awful, and I think it is better to avoid these things. If your body needs meat, it may be better to eat bigger animals. Eventually you may be able to eliminate the need for meat. I think that our basic nature as human beings is to be vegetarian — making every effort not to harm other living beings. If we apply our intelligence, we can create a sound, nutritional program. It is very dangerous to ignore the suffering of any sentient being.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Interview in Worlds in Harmony: Dialogues on Compassionate Action, Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1992, pp. 20-21.

Dejan Stojanovic photo
Sinclair Lewis photo
Greg Bear photo
Gabriel García Márquez photo
Morrissey photo
Vitruvius photo
Henry George photo
Garth Nix photo
Sarah Brightman photo
William John Macquorn Rankine photo
Ross Mintzer photo
Clifford D. Simak photo

““You sound like a rugged individualist,” said Webster.
“You say that like you think it’s funny,” yapped the mayor.
“I do think it’s funny,” said Webster. “Funny, and tragic, that anyone should think that way today.”
“The world would be a lot better off with some rugged individualism,” snapped the mayor. “Look at the men who have gone places—”
“Meaning yourself?” asked Weber.
“You might take me, for example,” Carter agreed. “I worked hard. I took advantage of opportunity. I had some foresight. I did—”
“You mean you licked the correct boots and stepped in the proper faces,” said Webster. “You’re the shining example of the kind of people the world doesn’t want today. You positively smell musty, your ideas are so old. You’re the last of the politicians, Carter, just as I was the last of the Chamber of Commerce secretaries. Only you don’t know it yet. I did. I got out. Even when it cost me something, I got out, because I had to save my self-respect. Your kind of politics is dead. They are dead because any tinhorn with a loud mouth and a brassy front could gain power by appeal to mob psychology. And you haven’t got mob psychology any more. You can’t have mob psychology when people don’t give a damn what happens to a thing that’s dead already—a political system that broke down under its own weight.””

Source: City (1952), Chapter 1, “City” (pp. 34-35)

Brian Wilson photo
Elie Wiesel photo
Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon photo
Walther von der Vogelweide photo

“He was known to his countrymen as the Nightingale, but his own sweet-sounding name of Bird's-meadow (Vogelweide) suggests even more directly the pure, true, flute-like strain which he poured into Europe’s choir of voices.”

Walther von der Vogelweide (1170–1230) Middle High German lyric poet

Laurie Magnus A General Sketch of European Literature in the Centuries of Romance (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1918) pp. 27-28.
Praise

Charlton Heston photo
Michael Chabon photo
David Hume photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Brandon Boyd photo
Martin Rushent photo
Alan Moore photo
Neil Diamond photo
Pete Yorn photo
Janna Levin photo

“(By moving) I'm making sounds on the drums of spacetime"… "Space itself wobbles and rumbles like a drum… Black holes can bang on spacetime like mallets on a drum”

Janna Levin (1967) American theoretical cosmologist

(2010) http://youtube.com/watch?v=eLz9TvxGoKs

James Taylor photo

“Oh, Mexico.
It sounds so sweet with the sun sinking low.
Moon's so bright like to light up the night,
Make everything all right.”

James Taylor (1948) American singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Mexico"
Song lyrics, Gorilla (1975)

Ellen Kushner photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Charlotte Brontë photo
Jim Rogers photo

“Unfortunately politicians are not very sound people or they wouldn't be politicians.”

Jim Rogers (1942) American writer

Jim Rogers quizzed on euro, Greece bailout, EU future (time:4:50) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZrLlFyPZ-Y

Orson Scott Card photo
Maxwell D. Taylor photo
A.E. Housman photo
Thomas Fuller photo

“Music is nothing else but wild sounds civilised into time and tune.”

Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) English churchman and historian

The History of the Worthies of England (1662): Musicians.

David Chalmers photo