Words of wisdom
I love a good quote. There is no more quick and snappy source of inspiration.
Here are some of my favourites. This is just a bit of fun and perhaps a little insight into my way of thinking.
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“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” – Maya Angelou
“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity” – Amelia Earhart
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” – John Lennon
“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value” – Albert Einstein
“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent” – Victor Hugo
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent” – Eleanor Roosevelt
“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter” – Mark Twain
“Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours” – Jimi Hendrix
“There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing” – Aristotle
“Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content” – Helen Keller
“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life” – John Lennon
“All art is failed music,” (writing in an article about his twelve favourite songs) “Music has saved more lives than the Samaritans and God put together. I would throw all the paintings that have ever been painted, all the books that have ever been written and all the films that have ever been filmed into the Atlantic Ocean for these twelve tracks.” – Sebastian Horsley
“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana” – Groucho Marx
6 Comments
Emma Corbett-Usher
“Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music” – Angela Monet
Justine Davis
Some interesting quotes. Being a keen musician I am of course in agreement with Victor Hugo.
And Duke Orsino in Twelth Night ‘if music be the food of love, play on’ – Shakespeare of course
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Edmund Morel
Music has at least three purposes:
1. Strengthening the social bond between a group of humans
2. Sharing of feelings
3. Courtship
Humans share their feelings by singing and dancing, they develop a sense of belonging together, friendships emerge. Good dancers and singers are preferred by potential mates. Some animals have melodies and sounds to attract a mate, to generate a “community emotion” and to communicate. Whales and dolphins “sing” and wolves howl, many bird species sing, maybe because many bird species have only one partner to raise their offspring (lifelong “matrimony”), they also sing for attracting and choosing a mate. Anthropologist Mary Batten writes in her book “Sexual strategies-how females choose their mates” that the order “primates” includes more species with monogamous behavior than any other mammalian order. Lou Andreas-Salomé reports the same in her book “Die Erotik”, published 1910. Birds do also sing and twitter to defend their territory or to mark it, as a signal: Every male bird of the same species will be attacked if he crosses the border of the territory. Only humans have a language with many words, so only humans have songs with lyrics. Evolution gave our ancestors music and made them and us gregarious, and the present shows the relative success of mankind over the animals.
vicky
Thank you for this interesting summary! This is indeed one of the arguments for the cultural evolution of music. However, it must be considered alongside others. For an interesting recent summary paper I highly recommend the writings of Henkjan Honing – https://nautil.us/we-were-born-to-groove-475001/