Tao Te Ching
Music
When we made our Translator lineage, we realized that everyone on our lists was at least on some level a translator “standing on the shoulders of giants.” Almost all quotes and ideas attributed to a particular person are a rephrasing of older concepts and can be traced back through the centuries. Similar to Suzuki Roshi’s image of the Buddhist teachings being like a bread recipe, insipid and worthless unless re-baked, re-translated into the modern culture and mindset; the great ideas of history and civilization all need to be re-understood and translated into the modern idiom. Music represents another form of translation. Bob Dylan and John Lennon epitomize this process with words but instrumental-only music does the same thing on a less rational, more emotional level.
Quotes (83)
“My lyre must always play. For without music we are nothing. We knead the shapes out of nothing. Tunes out of silence, love out of hate. Music that lasts forever.”
“There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.”
“listen to people's music and you know their manners, observe them at play and you know their customs.”
“There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard”
“If you ask what it is that has caused the ruler to neglect the affairs of government and the humble man to neglect his tasks, the answer is music... if the rulers, ministers, and gentlemen of the world truly desire to promote what is beneficial to the world and eliminate what is harmful, they must prohibit and put a stop to this thing called music!”
“I would teach children music,physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning.”
“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.”
“If a man cannot dance, he cannot pray. Angels have mouths but lack the power of speech. The speak to God by dancing... dancing kills the ego, and once the ego has been killed there is no further obstacle to prevent you from joining with God”
“Nature itself seems to have given us music as a way to lighten the strain of labor; even the rower in the galleys is cheered to effort by song.”
“find the sound of silence where sound and the hearer of sound reveal all-embracing space.”
“On the whirling wheel of habitual actions, the music and dance of existence takes form.”
“As the master touched his lute so lovingly and slow—when the sound of music broke the stillness of the night—a rapture swayed me without bounds as I listened to the sounds.”
“Confucius relied on kindness and justice, ritual and music to order the kingdom. Lao-tzu’s only concern was to open people’s minds”
“Every detail clearly appears before you. Sound and form, echo and shadow, happen instantly without leaving traces.”
“I don't want learning, or dignity, or respectability. I want this music, and this dawn, and the warmth of your cheek against mine”
“Since, after all this floating world is unreal, instead of holding onto things in your mind, go and sing!"”
“It's not those who write the laws that have the greatest impact on society. It's those who write the songs.”
“Music is the hidden arithmetical exercise of a mind unconscious that it is calculating.”
“Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows like harmony in music; there is a dark inscrutable workmanship that reconciles discordant elements, makes them cling together In one society.”
“Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs, -
To the silent wilderness,
Where the soul need not repress
Its music.”
“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter;
Therefore, ye soft pipes, play on.”
“Without the music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no work that man glories in ever done.”
“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”
“The oldest, truest, most beautiful organ of music, the origin to which alone our music owes its being, is the human voice.”
“Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it. It would not leave them narrow-minded and bigoted.”
“To produce music is also in a sense to produce children... Without music, life would be a mistake.”
“If all the arts aspire to the condition of music, all the sciences aspire to the condition of mathematics.”
“Music is essentially useless, as life is... Music is a means of giving form to our inner feelings without attaching them to events or objects in the world.”
“There is something suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is, by her nature, equivocal. I shall not be going too far in saying at once that she is politically suspect.”
“Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.”
“No doubt the root idea behind all of these dances is more or less one and the same, the manifestation of primal rhythmic energy. Whatever the origins of Shiva's dance, it became in time the clearest image of the activity of God which any art or religion can boast of.”
“I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.”
“your body is the harp of your soul... [you] bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds.”
“Gifts from the singers and dancers - though fashioned of dreams, is raiment and food for your soul”
“Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife.”
“The minor virtues, I reflected, are much more dangerous than the minor vices. If these two did not sing and play so well, they would not be invited to pafties, would not get drunk, would not fritter away their time, and they might be saved. As it was, singing beautifully, playing the guitar beautifully, they had started along the downgrade.”
“The true City of God: that fair and pleasant Country of the Mind where all the great dead are still alive, and wisdom makes with beauty an eternal music.”
“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
“There is nothing in the world that is not mysterious, but the mystery is more evident in certain things than in others: in the sea, in the eyes of the elders, in the color yellow, and in music.”
“Music... will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you.”
“Song itself is a slowing down of speech... There is no melody in primiteive or Oriental music because the road of song is a continuum known only to literate man.”
“We are only saved by music from being overwhelmed by nonsense... [by] great quantities of small talk.”
“‘We have nothing on which to dine, Splendid, we shall have more time to sit outside and enjoy the moonlight, with music provided by the wind in the pines.”
“Music and pure mathematics are closer to life than are languages which point to meanings beyond themselves. Ordinary language refers to life, but music is living.”
“Our present linearly and hierarchically structured languages are likely to transform into a music-language, capable of communicating subtle differentiations and simultaneities of experience, reasoning and feeling.”
“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”
“music has the power to transform people, and in doing so… to transform situations”
“Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die.”
“Songs, to me, were more important that just light entertainment. They were my preceptor and guide into some altered consciousness of reality, some different republic, some liberated republic.”
“If you want to know yourself better, you have to bring in something different from someplace else… that’s why we need pictures or literature, or music”
“Songs, like dandelion seeds, billowing across space and time. Who knows where they'll land? Or what they'll bring? Where will all these song seeds land... If a song plants an idea or a feeling in a mind, it has already changed the world.”
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