Insights, Snippets, Quotes, Epiphanies & All That Sort of Things

[drogulus]

"As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of
science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the
light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported
into the situation as convenient intermediaries - not by definition in
terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable,
epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. Let me interject that for my
part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in
Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise.
But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the
gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter
our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects
is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious
than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure
into the flux of experience."
                                                               -W.V.O. Quine, Two Dogmas of Empiricism

[North Star]

"I weep over my imperfect pages, but if future generations read them, they will be more touched by my weeping than by any perfection I might have achieved, since perfection would have kept me from weeping and, therefore, from writing. Perfection never materializes. The saint weeps, and is human. God is silent. That is why we can love the saint but cannot love God." Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (tr. Richard Zenith)

[Spineur]

Confidence is gained in drops, and is lost in liters.

Jean-Paul Sartre

[SymphonicAddict]

"We are an impossibility in an impossible universe."

Ray Bradbury

[drogulus]

     If something can happen it has. That leaves what can't happen, which hasn't.

[Spineur]

Infinity takes a long time especially toward the end

[drogulus]

     What time is it?

[Florestan]

I spent the whole week with Moritz Moszkowski's music and it was time well spent. Not least because I found this:

Moszkowski's most celebrated bon mot immortalised  him — a  riposte  to the  pompous pronouncement by  Hans  von  Bülow,  'Bach,  Beethoven, Brahms: Tous les autres sont des crétins' ('All the others are idiots'), to which Moszkowski replied: 'Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer and your humble servant Moritz Moszkowski: Tous  les  autres  sont  des  chrétiens!'  ('All  the  others  are christians!').

(from the liner notes to the Moszkowski / Paderewski volume of the Hyperion Romantic Piano Concerto series).

[SurprisedByBeauty]

Schreker is my cup of tea:
No one wrote quite so ambiguously -
In elusive harmony.
And if you listen you'll agree.


-


There are rumors which are crippling
It seems he did some fiddling -
On the other hand he sounds sublime:
Tricky business - James Levine.

[Wakefield]

.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

"Miss Marrable was that hardest of all born tyrants - an only child." - Wilkie Collins

[NikF]

"Your silence must rouse her curiosity, one conversation must leave her wanting more. You've got to play on her feelings all the time. She'll scorn public opinion a dozen times for your sake and call it a sacrifice, but she'll get her own back by tormenting you, and then later simply declare that she can't stand you. If you don't get the upper hand, her first kiss won't give you the right to expect a second." - Lermontov

[Florestan]

My chief objection to the innovators is that they aspire to go beyond Beethoven, and altogether dethrone Mozart and Haydn, hitherto the acknowledged keystones to the foundation of music; of course, we lesser lights are to be buried under the ruins of the tottering temples, and I for my part consider myself honored by such sepulture; who knows if we shall not some day or other be dug up like Herculaneum and Pompeii? - Ignaz Moscheles, 1857

[Florestan]

Personally, I consider that we have in Medtner one of the few remaining oases of the old musical outlook - when music was music and not a sport; when it still served as the language of expression; when it was permissible and not ridiculous to feel, and to disclose one's feelings. - Leonid Sabaneyev, The Musical Times, March 1, 1928

RTWT here: http://www.medtner.org.uk/sabeneev_1928.pdf

[North Star]

A prosperous fool is a grievous burden. - Aeschylus

[Karl Henning]

A prosperous fool is a grievous burden. - Aeschylus

Confirmed.

[Ken B]

A music critic was sentenced to death and stood before the firing squad. He was asked if he had any final requests — a cigarette perhaps, or a blindfold.

"Yeah," he said, "play 'Achy-Breaky Heart,' but shoot me first."

[Florestan]

A music critic was sentenced to death and stood before the firing squad. He was asked if he had any final requests — a cigarette perhaps, or a blindfold.

"Yeah," he said, "play 'Achy-Breaky Heart,' but shoot me first."

[Karl Henning]

And: shoot to kill . . . .

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Just started researching H.P. Lovecraft and I really like this quote:

"The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind."