Quotes about Notes

My third day playing saxophone, I was in front of a congregation. I still didn't know the names of all the notes. I was playing by ear, following along, but it was such an encouraging environment, I couldn't fail. It was all, 'Yeah baby, you sound real good' no matter what you play. It was a great way to learn.

Music is made out of nothing but some fairly simple rules. Yet it's true that no one made them up. The rules. The notes themselves amount to almost nothing. But why some particular arrangement of these notes should have such a profound effect on our emotions is a mystery beyond even the hope of comprehension. Music is not a language. it has no reference to anything other than itself

So where does music come from? No one knows. A platonic theory of music just muddies the water. Music is made out of nothing but some fairly simple rules. Yet it's true that no one made them up. The rules. The notes themselves amount to almost nothing. But why some particular arrangement of these notes should have such a profound effect on our emotions is a mystery beyond even the hope of comprehension. Music is not a language.

We shall be notes in that great Symphony Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres, And all the live World's throbbing heart shall be One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years Have lost their terror now, we shall not die, The Universe itself shall be our Immortality!

Life is like a nice fresh batch of Swiss cheese. Note to self: savor the holes, too, like the spaces between musical notes.

Cease, stranger, cease those witching notes, The art of syren choirs; Hush the seductive voice that floats Across the trembling wires. Music's ethereal power was given Not to dissolve our clay, But draw Promethean beams from heaven To purge the dross away.

The olive grove of Academe, Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long.

There were sharp little blows in the music, and waves of quick, fine notes that burst and rolled like the thin, clear ringing of broken glass. There were slow notes, as if the cords of the violins trembled in hesitation, tense with the fullness of sound, taking a few measured steps before the leap into the explosion of laughter.

In Science we have been reading only the notes to a poem; in Christianity we find the poem itself.

A poet never takes notes..you never take notes in a Love Affair.

In the early 60s, you read your essays to your supervisor rather than hand them in. I was both lazy and clever, and realised I didn't need to write essays at all, I could simply talk with some notes in front of me.

The refunding of the national debt at a lower rate of interest should be accomplished without compelling the withdrawal of the national-bank notes, and thus disturbing the business of the country.