An art aims, above all, at producing something beautiful which affects not our feelings but the organ of pure contemplation, our imagination.

The Prelude to Tristan and Isolde reminds me of the old Italian painting of a martyr whose intestines are slowly unwound from his body on a reel.

Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.

Grant that the true organ with which the beautiful is apprehended is the imagination, and it follows that all arts are likely to affect the feelings indirectly.

Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto gives us for the first time the hideous notion that there can be music that stinks to the ear.

You cannot imagine the wild enthusiasm that these two men created in Vienna. Newspapers went into raptures over each new waltz, and innumerable articles appeared about Lanner and Strauss.

That the sweetly intoxicating three-four rhythm which took hold of hand & foot, necessarily eclipsed great & serious music & made the audience unfit for any intellectual effort goes without saying.

The art of seduction should be from within yourself, not from your outer appearance. If whoever you're doing this for doesn't realize that... then, honey, you're seducing the wrong person.

A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him.

If we empty our hearts of self God will fill them with His love.

The day hums sweetly when you have enough bees working for you.

God is love, the human being is all love, only the human has forgotten it long ago.

No, I'm too tired to run, and you're too fast. You'd only catch me." "That's right, luv." Softly, but with unyielding resonance. "if you run from me, I'll chase you. And I'll find you. Bones said.

I'm suspicious of full-replacement programs - that is, pronouncements that one way of doing something will entirely supplant another, and that in fact we have to hurry the replacement along.

You know I am an actor, and I have medals for diction.

Often jobs are un-turndownable even before you read the script. You go, "Well, I have to do that."