Quotes about Composers

When written in Chinese, the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters--one represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.

I have learned as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to fonts of wisdom and knowledge.

I sometimes think that the most plaintive ditty has brought a fuller joy and of longer duration to its composer that the conquest of Persia to the Macedonian.

Half the world is composed of idiots, the other half of people clever enough to take indecent advantage of them.

The Virginia delegation's recommended bill of rights included the following: That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

A young music student went to a great composer and said, "sir, I want to know how to write a symphony." "what,"said the musician, "at your age?" "I am 19," replied the student, "and you wrote a symphony at that age." "true, true," mused the composer, "but I didn't have to ask how to do it!"

That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well regulated Militia composed of the body of the people trained to arms is the proper, natural and safe defense of a free State. . . .

"You cannot believe what you are saying." "Well, no. Hardly ever. But the philosopher is like the poet. The latter composes ideal letters for an ideal nymph, only to plumb with his words the depths of passion. The philosopher tests the coldness of his gaze, to see how far he can undermine the fortress of bigotry."

With reference to the narrative of events, far from permitting myself to derive it from the first source that came to hand, I did not even trust my own impressions, but it rests partly on what I saw myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report being always tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible. My conclusions have cost me some labor from the want of coincidence between accounts of the same occurrences by different eyewitnesses, arising sometimes from imperfect memory, sometimes from undue partiality for one side or the other. The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but I shall be content if it is judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it. My history has been composed to be an everlasting possession, not the showpiece of an hour.

Even in the meanest sorts of Labor, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets himself to work.

Nature composes some of her loveliest poems for the microscope and the telescope.

Shonin: I have composed a poem. Kokushi: Let's hear it. Shonin: When I chant, Both Buddha and self Cease to exist. There is only the voice that says, Namu Amida Butsu. Kokushi: Something's wrong with the last couple of lines, don't you think? (after a lapse of time) Shonin: This is how I've written it: When I chant, Both Buddha and self Cease to exist. Namu Amida Butsu. Kokushi: There! You got it!

Computers are composed of nothing more than logic gates stretched out to the horizon in a vast numerical irrigation system.

To see a man fearless in dangers, untainted with lusts, happy in adversity, composed in a tumult, and laughing at all those things which are generally either coveted or feared, all men must acknowledge that this can be from nothing else but a beam of divinity that influences a mortal body.

Society is composed of two great classes - those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.

American Composer

Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases, though not often.

The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

It is what man does not know of God Composes the visible poem of the world.

Can it really be said that before the day of our pretentious science, humanity was composed solely of imbeciles and the superstitious?

The American composer Silas Gamaliel Pratt deserves immortality, if only for the alleged conversation with Wagner, when Wagner said, "You are the Richard Wagner of the United States", and the polite rejoinder was made, "And you, sir, are the Silas G. Pratt of Germany."

A review of his work: His music soon spread throughout Europe, and he was invited to America were he performed the Piano Concerto. He would have wished that he would be remembered as an opera composer, but it was to be his orchestral extravaganzas, mainly the trilogy of Roman pictures that has made his name famous.

On December 12, 1829, Paganini wrote his friend Germi: "The variations I've composed on the graceful Neapolitan ditty, 'Oh Mamma, Mama Cara,' outshine everything. I can't describe it!" He was writing from Karlsruhe, in the midst of his triumphal tour through Germany. That letter marks the earliest known mention of the variations that would become famous as "The Carnival of Venice." At the time of his letter, Paganini had already performed the piece in at least four concerts. From then on, it would be one of his most popular compositions.

There is no "The End" to be written, neither can you, like an architect, engrave in stone the day the garden was finished; a painter can frame his picture, a composer notate his coda, but a garden is always on the move.

Our strength is often composed of the weakness we're damned if we're going to show.

We composers are at least as significant as the stars who make $14 million or $15 million. You just don't see us.

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.

But this does not exempt the sane from a feeling of alarm when a madman who has composed a sublime poem, after explaining to them in the most logical fashion that he has been shut up by mistake through his wife's machinations, imploring them to intercede for him with the governor of the asylum, complaining of the promiscuous company that is forced upon him, concludes as follows: "You see that man in the courtyard, who I'm obliged to put up with; he thinks he's Jesus Christ. That should give you an idea of the sort of lunatics I've been shut up with: he can't be Jesus Christ, because I'm Jesus Christ!" A moment earlier, you were on the point of going to assure the psychiatrist that a mistake had been made. On hearing these words, even if you bear in mind the admirable poem at which this same man is working every day, you shrink from him. . . .

God created music as a common language for all men. It inspires the poets, the composers and the architects. It lures us to search our souls for the meaning of the mysteries described in ancient books.