“If you pass a church and hear an organ, go in and listen. If allowed to sit on the organ bench, try your inexperienced fingers and marvel at the supreme power of music.”
— Robert Schumann, Advice to Young Musicians / Musikalische Haus- und Lebensregeln (trans. Henry Hugo Pierson, 1860) (1848)
“And universal art, by uniting the most different people in one common feeling, by destroying separation, will educate people to union, will show them, not by reason but by life itself, the joy of universal union reaching beyond the bounds set by life.”
— Leo Tolstoy, What is Art? (trans. Aylmer Maude) (1897)
“And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.”
— Plato, Symposium
“Come, we that love the Lord, And let our joys be known; Join in a song with sweet accord, And thus surround the throne.”
— Isaac Watts, Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707)
“A letter always feels to me like immortality because it is the mind alone without corporeal friend.”
— Emily Dickinson, Letters to T. W. Higginson (in 'Emily Dickinson's Letters', The Atlantic Monthly) (1869)
“You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.”
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (1923)
“I wish your efforts all possible success in the service of art; it is that and science alone which point the way, and lead us to hope for a higher life.”
— Ludwig van Beethoven, Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 (trans. Lady Grace Wallace, 1866), Vol. 2 (1824)
“Try to understand the last word of what the great artists, the serious masters, say in their masterpieces; there will be God in it.”
— Vincent van Gogh, Letters of Vincent van Gogh (1880)
“Worship of a Hero is transcendent admiration of a Great Man.”
— Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841)
“As we treat this spirit, so are we treated by it. Indeed, no man can be good without the help of God.”
— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius
“What light! What sunshine! What a delight to sit at the open window with a bunch of violets before me, and to drink in the fresh air! I am full of sensations. I feel so well, and yet so sad--I could weep. Yet I know not why. Only music can express these feelings.”
— Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, The Life and Letters of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, ed. Modeste Tchaikovsky (trans. Rosa Newmarch, 1906) (1881)
“I played for an hour and a half on the organ. It came right from my heart too.”
— Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Vol. 1 (trans. Lady Grace Wallace, 1865) (1777)
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