How charming is divine philosophy! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute, And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets Where no crude surfeit reigns
A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, 'Huh. It works. It makes sense.'
The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.
There is a fault common to all singers. When they're among friends and are asked to sing they don't want to, and when they're not asked to sing they never stop.
There's music in the sighing of a reed; There's music in the gushing of a rill; There's music in all things, if men had ears; The earth is but the music of the spheres.
The technical history of modern harmony is a history of growth of toleration by the human ear of chords that at first sounded discordant and senseless to the main body of contemporary professional musicians.