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. . . MUSIC [QUOTES FOLLOW LINKS] see: HAROLD ARLEN BACH, BAGPIPES (THE) BEATLES BEETHOVEN CLASSICAL MUSIC COMPOSERS, CONDUCTORS ELVIS FLUTE JUDY GARLAND MOZART MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS, MUSICIANS (below) OPERA PIANO COLE PORTER RAP ROCK 'n' ROLL FRANK SINATRA, SINGING SOUNDS [Larry Lipton (Woody Allen) speaking:] I can't listen to that much Wagner, ya know? I start getting the urge to conquer Poland. --Woody Allen [Allen Stewart Konigsberg] (b. 1935) American actor, screenwriter, and director. "Manhattan Murder Mystery" [1993 film] Music exalts each joy, allays each grief, Expels diseases, softens every pain, Subdues the rage of poison, and the plague. --Dr. John Armstrong (1709—1779) Scottish poet. _The Art of Preserving Health_ [1744], bk. IV "The Passions" I love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by his tail outside of a window, and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws. --Charles Baudelaire (1821—1867) French poet and critic. As told to Jules Claretie, in _The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire_ [1919]. I prefer Offenbach to Bach often. --attributed to Sir Thomas Beecham (1879—1961) English conductor. Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth. --Ludwig van Beethoven (1770—1827) German composer. Letter to Ferdinand Ries [20 December 1822]. [After playing a benefit at Carnegie Hall in October 1956:] Jack Benny played Mendelssohn last night. Mendelssohn lost. --Jack Benny [Benjamin Kubelsky] (1894—1974) American entertainer. Which of the powers, love or music, is able to lift man to the sublimest heights? It is a great question, but it seems to me that one might answer it thus: love cannot express the idea of music, while music may give an idea of love. But why separate them? They are the two wings of the soul. --Louis Hector Berlioz (1803—1869) French composer. _Memoires_ [1870] TV, which compared to music plays a comparatively small role in the formation of young people's character and taste, is a consensus monster—the Right monitors its content for sex, the Left for violence, and many other interested sects for many other things. But the music has hardly been touched, and what efforts have been made are both ineffectual and misguided about the nature of the problem. The result is nothing less than parents' loss of control over their children's moral education at a time when no one else is seriously concerned with it. --Allan Bloom (1930—1992) American writer and educator. _The Closing of the American Mind_ [1987] There’s something about music that’s healing. There’ve been many times that I don’t feel good at all, but once I hit the stage, something transforms. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but it just does. Unless you’re just about dead, music’ll do something for you. --Ray Charles (1930—2004) American pianist and soul singer. Interview in _The Los Angeles Times_ [1996]. Music rises from the human heart. When the emotions are touched, they are expressed in sounds, and when the sounds take definite forms, we have music. Therefore the music of a peaceful and prosperous country is quiet and joyous, and the government is orderly; the music of a country in turmoil shows dissatisfaction and anger, and the government is chaotic; and the music of a destroyed country shows sorrow and remembrance of the past and the people are distressed. Thus we see music and government are directly connected with each other. --Confucius (551—479 B.C.) K'ung Ch'iu, Chinese philosopher. _On Music_ Music has charms to soothe a savage breast, To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak. --William Congreve (1670—1729) English dramatist. "The Mourning Bride", I, i [1697] Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. --Elvis Costello [Declan MacManus] (b. 1954) English singer and songwriter. Quoted in "Musician" [October 1983]. If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature. --Charles Darwin (1809—1882) English naturalist. _Autobiography_ (ed. Francis Darwin) [1887] - INTERVIEWER: Do you know what your songs are about? DYLAN: Yeah, some of them are about ten minutes long, others five or six. --Bob Dylan [Robert Allen Zimmerman] (b. 1941) American singer and songwriter. Attributed. - If yesterday's rock was the music of abandon, today's is that of abandonment. The odd truth about contemporary teenage music — the characteristic that most separates it from what has gone before — is its compulsive insistence on the damage wrought by broken homes, family dysfunction, checked-out parents, and (especially) absent fathers. [...] To put this perhaps unexpected point more broadly, during the same years in which progressive-minded and politically correct adults have been excoriating Ozzie and Harriet as an artifact of 1950s-style oppression, many millions of American teenagers have enshrined a new generation of music idols whose shared generational signature in song after song is to rage about what not having had a nuclear family has done to them. This is quite a fascinating puzzle of the times. The self-perceived emotional damage scrawled large across contemporary music may not be statistically quantifiable, but it is nonetheless among the most striking of all the unanticipated consequences of our home-alone world. --Mary Eberstadt, "Eminem Is Right", _Policy Review_ [December 2004] - ILSA (Ingrid Bergman): Play it once, Sam, for old times' sake. SAM (Dooley Wilson): I don't know what you mean, Miss Ilsa. ILSA: Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By.' --"Casablanca" [1942 film]. Screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch. It is right well done that pilgrims have with them both singers and also pipers; that when one of them that goeth barefoot striketh his toe against a stone and hurteth him sore, and maketh him to bleed, it is well done that he or his fellow begin then a song or else take out of his bosom a bagpipe for to drive away with such mirth the hurt of his fellow; for with such solace the travail and weariness of pilgrims is lightly and merrily borne. --Desiderius Erasmus (1469—1536) Dutch humanist and theologian. _Pilgrimages to St. Mary of Walsingham and St. Thomas of Canterbury_, p. 21 [1875 edn.] Yet there is one thing the world with all its rottenness cannot take from us, and that is the deep and abiding joy and consolation perpetuate in great music. Here the spirit may find home and relief when all else fails. --Eric Fenby (1906—1997) British musician, musicologist, and author. _Delius as I Knew Him_ [1936] Singin' in the rain, just singin' in the rain. What a glorious feeling, I'm happy again. --Arthur Freed (1894—1973) American lyricist. "Singin' in the Rain" In the musical film _Hollywood Review of 1929_ [1929]. Bach almost persuades me to be a Christian. --Roger Fry (1866—1934) English art critic and painter. In Virginia Woolf, _Roger Fry_ [1940]. - They told me later that my blood pressure when I arrived at the clinic across the street measured zero; that it was lucky I had decided to walk and not wait for a ride, because I would likely have bled to death otherwise. But it was a very difficult walk. When I looked down at my right hand I saw the bones sticking out in all directions and the skin crumpled like paper. It could only have been a two- or three-minute walk at the outside, but the possibility existed that I would pass out or just stop, and I didn't want to. Providentially an old Zionist marching song with a good, strong beat came into my head. Music is valuable. --David Hillel Gelernter (b. 1955) Professor of computer science at Yale injured opening a package from the "Unibomber." _Drawing Life: Surviving the Unibomber_ [1997] - [On flute music:] Specific for the bite of a viper. --Aulus Gellius (130—180) Latin author and grammarian. Gellius cites Theophrastus & Democritus for this belief. Quoted in Charles Burney _A General History of Music: From the Earliest Ages to the Present Period_, vol I [4 vols., 1776-89]. One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749—1832) German poet, novelist, and playwright. _Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre_ (Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship), bk. 5, ch. 1 [1795-96] I know only two tunes: one of them is "Yankee Doodle" and the other one isn't. --Ulysses S. Grant (1822—1885) American Unionist general and 18th President of the United States [1869—1877]. Attributed in Clifton Fadiman _The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes_[1985]. Rock and roll was music to get pregnant by. Rap is music to get dead by. --Lewis Grizzard (1946—1994) American author and commentator. On the American South, [mid-1980s observation.] I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First, to discourage the composer from writing any more, and secondly, to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven. --Jascha Heifetz (1901—1987) Russian-born American violinist. Quoted in "LIFE" [28 July 1961]. God Save me from a bad neighbor and a beginner on the fiddle. --Italian proverb - [On hearing a violin solo:] Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible. --Samuel Johnson (1709—1784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. Quoted in William Seward _Supplement to the Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons_ [1797]. Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable. --Samuel Johnson (1709—1784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. Attributed in _The Tickler_ [1 February 1821]. Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice. --Samuel Johnson (1709—1784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. Attributed in Samuel Arthur Bent _Short Sayings of Great Men_ [1882]. - The sweetest music is the sound of the voice of the woman we love. --Jean de La Bruyčre (1645—1696) French essayist and moralist. _The Characters_ [1688] "Of Women," tr. Henri van Laun [1929] Last Thursday, at the Harvard Square Theatre, I saw my rock 'n' roll past flash before my eyes. And I saw something else: I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time. --Jon Landau, "Growing Young With Rock And Roll," The Real Paper [22 May 1974] Music is the universal language of mankind. --Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807—1882) American poet. _Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea_ [1835] A Chicago high school punished truants by making them listen to Frank Sinatra records. --Bill Mandel "The Year 1992: Calling It Like It Was" _San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle_ [20 December 1992] There are two things John [Lennon] and I always do when we're going to sit down and write a song. First of all we sit down. Then we think about writing a song. --Paul McCartney (b. 1942) English pop singer and songwriter. Quoted in Arnold Shaw _The Rock Revolution_ [1969]. Ahh, the soothing o' the Pipes. Whenever I find myself missing its melodious sounds, I just toss the cat in the dryer on low heat. --attributed to Jordan Montgomery - Music ... must never offend the ear; it must please the hearer, in other words, it must never cease to be music. --Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756—1791) Austrian composer regarded as one of the greatest musical geniuses ever. Letter to Leopold Mozart [26 September 1781]. Melody is the essence of music. I compare a good melodist to a fine racer, and counterpointists to hack post-horses. --Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756—1791) Austrian composer regarded as one of the greatest musical geniuses ever. In Michael Kelly _Reminiscences_ [1826]. - I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for those people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.' --Bob Newhart (b. 1929) American stand-up comedian and actor. Quoted in Jon Batson _The Songwriter's Hook Book_ [2003]. Without music, life would be a mistake. --Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844—1900) German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture. _Twilight of the Idols_ [1889] The Orchestra very often played while the prisoners were at work. To the accompaniment of this music, the guards would call out prisoners whose work was especially feeble and shoot them there and then. --Polish miner deported to the Soviet labor camp at Maldiak, in Norman Davies _God's Playground_ v. 2 [1981] p. 450. As some to church repair, Not for the doctrine, but the music there. --Alexander Pope (1688—1744) English poet. _An Essay on Criticism_, l. 342 [1711] [On Beethoven's 9th:] Nobody will ever write anything better than this symphony. --Sergei Rachmaninov (1873—1943) Russian composer and pianist. Quoted in Sergei Bertenssen and Jay Leyda's _Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music_ [1965]. Joy, sorrow, tears, lamentation, laughter — to all these music gives voice, but in such a way that we are transported from the world of unrest to a world of peace, and see reality in a new way, as if we were sitting by a mountain lake and contemplating hills and woods and clouds in the tranquil and fathomless water. --Albert Schweitzer (1875—1965) Franco-German theologian, philosopher, and mission doctor. _Albert Schweitzer: Thoughts for Our Times_ (ed. Erica Anderson) [1975] - The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted. --William Shakespeare (1564—1616) English dramatist. _The Merchant of Venice_, V, i [1596-98] Music oft hath such a charm To make bad good, and good provoke to harm. --William Shakespeare (1564—1616) English dramatist. _Measure for Measure_, IV, i [1604] - My favorite story involved the song "I Wanna Be Around To Pick Up the Pieces When Somebody Breaks Your Heart." A lady in Ohio named Sadie Zimmerstedt sent an angry letter to famous songwriter Johnny Mercer. She was mad at Frank Sinatra for divorcing his first wife, Nancy, and wrote a note on lined calendar paper asking Mercer to write a song which should be entitled: "I Wanna Be Around to Pick Up the Pieces When Somebody Breaks Your Heart." The rest is, of course, pop music history. Mercer wrote the song and put her name on it along with his, Tony Bennett made it famous and Sadie got a $50,000 royalty check. Whether or not it bothered Sinatra, surely Sadie was smiling all the way to the bank. --Tony Stein in "The Chesapeake Clipper" Norfolk, Virginia [July 2001]. A Steinway will never sound quite the same again. --Steinway & Sons, piano manufacturer. Sole copy in ad honoring the memory of Vladimir Horowitz who had just died. _New York Times_ [10 November 1989] I do play the violin, but not well enough to hold a steady job — just a series of one night stands. --attributed to Isaac Stern (1920—2001) Ukrainian-born violinist. In a world of peace and love, music would be the universal language. --Henry David Thoreau (1817—1862) American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher. _The Service_, ch. 2 [1840] [To his orchestra after an unsatisfactory performance:] Assassins! --Arturo Toscanini (1867—1957) Italian conductor. Quoted in Nat Shapiro _An Encyclopedia of Quotations about Music_[1977]. Sirs, I have tested your machine. It adds a new terror to life and makes death a long-felt want. --Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852—1917) English actor-manager. When asked for a testimonial by a gramophone company, in Hesketh Pearson _Beerbohm-Tree_, ch. 19 [1956]. The sound of laughter has always seemed to me the most civilized music in the universe. --Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov [1921—2004] British entertainer, writer, and humanitarian. Quoted in Jerome Agel & Walter D. Glanze _Pearls of Wisdom_, p. 131 [1987]. All my life I was having trouble with women ... Then, after I quit having trouble with them, I could feel in my heart that somebody would always have trouble with them, so I kept writing those blues. --Muddy Waters (1915-1983) American blues singer and guitarist. Quoted in Tony Palmer _All You Need is Love_ [1976]. - [Of "The Star-Spangled Banner":] The New York Herald Tribune ... commented that it had "words that nobody can remember to a tune that nobody can sing." --Quoted in C. A. Browne _The Story of our National Ballads_ [1960]. -- Country music titles "Come On Down Off The Stove, Granny, You're Too Old To Ride The Range." "You're the Reason Our Kids Are So Ugly" "I've Been Flushed From The Bathroom Of Your Heart" "My Wife Ran Off With My Best Friend And I Sure Do Miss Him" "She Got The Ring And I Got The Finger" "Get Your Tongue Outta My Mouth 'Cause I'm Kissing You Goodbye" "I Got In At 2 With A 10 And Woke Up At 10 With A 2" "Mama Get The Hammer (There's A Fly On Papa's Head)" "I'd Rather Have A Bottle In Front-a Me Than a Frontal Lobotomy" -- Most Blues begin with: "Woke up this morning..." "I got a good woman" is a bad way to begin the Blues, unless you stick something nasty in the next line like, "I got a good woman, with the meanest face in town." The Blues is simple. After you get the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes . . . sort of: "Got a good woman with the Meanest face in town. Yes, I got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Got teeth like Margaret Thatcher, and she weigh 500 pound." The Blues is not about choice. You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch-ain't no way out. Blues is not a matter of color. It's a matter of bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the blues. Sonny Liston could. Ugly white people also got a leg up on the blues. Blues cars are Chevys, Fords, Cadillacs and broken-down trucks. Blues don't travel in Volvos, BMWs or Sport Utility Vehicles. Most Blues Transportation is a Greyhound bus or a southbound train. Jet aircraft and state-sponsored motor pools ain't even in the running. Walkin' plays a major part in the blues lifestyle. So does fixin' to die. Teenagers can't sing the Blues. They ain't fixin' to die yet. Adults sing the Blues. In Blues, "adulthood" means being old enough to get the Electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis. Blues can take place in New York City but not in Hawaii or any place in Canada. Hard times in Minneapolis or Seattle is probably just clinical depression. Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City are still the best places to have the Blues. You cannot have the blues in any place that don't get rain. A man with male pattern baldness ain't the blues. A woman with male pattern baldness is. Breaking your leg 'cause you were skiing is not the blues. Breaking your leg 'cause a alligator chomped on it is. You can't have no Blues in a office or a shopping mall. The lighting is wrong. Go outside to the parking lot or sit by the dumpster. Good places for the Blues: a. highway b. jailhouse c. empty bed d. bottom of a whiskey glass. Bad places for the Blues: a. Nordstrom's b. gallery openings c. Ivy League institutions d. golf courses. No one will believe it's the Blues if you wear a suit, 'less you happen to be a old ethnic person, and you slept in it. Do you have the right to sing the Blues? Yes, if: a. you older than dirt b. you blind c. you shot a man in Memphis d. you can't be satisfied. No, if: a. you have all your teeth b. you were once blind but now can see c. the man in Memphis lived d. you have a 401K or trust fund. If you ask for water and your darlin' give you gasoline, it's the Blues. Other acceptable Blues beverages are: a. cheap wine b. whiskey or bourbon c. muddy water d. nasty black coffee. The following are NOT Blues beverages: a. Perrier b. Chardonnay c. Snapple d. Slim Fast e. Diet Coke. If death occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it's a Blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is another Blues way to die. So are the electric chair, substance abuse and dying lonely on a broken- down cot. You can't have a Blues death if you die during a tennis match or while getting liposuction. Some Blues names for women: a. Sadie b. Big Mama c. Bessie d. Fat River Dumpling e. Caldonia. Some Blues names for men: a. Joe b. Willie c. Little Willie d. Big Willie e. Leroy Persons. Ladies with names like Michelle, Amber, Jennifer, Tiffany, Brooke, Brittany, and Heather can't sing the Blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis. Make your own Blues name Starter Kit: a. name of physical infirmity (Blind, Cripple, Lame, etc.) b. first name (see above) plus name of fruit (Lemon, Melon, Kiwi, etc.) c. last name of President (Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore, etc.) e.g.: Blind Melon Jefferson, Jakeleg Lemon Johnson or Cripple Kiwi Fillmore, etc. (Well, maybe not "Kiwi.") Oh, by the way. I don't care how tragic your life. If you own a computer, you cannot sing the blues. --anon. -- _Waltz_, in Music, the name of a riotous and indecent German dance. -- Definition in an art dictionary [1825], cited in OED s.v. waltz. --- There's a fairly long passage in the last movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony in which the basses have nothing to do. One evening at a concert at Carnegie Hall the three bassists looped strings around their scores so as not to lose their place and walked out. They went next door to the Carnegie Tavern and had a few drinks. Alas, it was the last of the ninth, the score was tied, and the bassists were loaded! --- TRIVIA: The cover of the first issue of "Rolling Stone" magazine featured John Lennon. ----- busker [BUS-kur], noun: A person who entertains (as by playing music) in public places. cadence (noun) The beat or measure of something that follows a set rhythm, for example, a dance or a march. dulcet (adj.) ['dęl-set] Pleasingly sweet to the ear, soothingly musical, most closely associated with sounds, such as those of the dulcimer, a word based on the same root. leitmotif [LYT-moh-teef], noun: 1. In music drama, a marked melodic phrase or short passage which always accompanies the reappearance of a certain person, situation, abstract idea, or allusion in the course of the play; a sort of musical label. 2. A dominant and recurring theme. mandolin (noun) A stringed instrument of the lute family with a pear- shaped body and four or more pairs of strings, usually played with a plectrum. mariachi (noun) Hispanic 1. Traditional Mexican folk music as played by a small group of musicians. 2. A Mexican street band that plays traditional folk music. mellifluous (adj.) [mę-'li-flu-węs] Pleasant to hear. opus (noun) One of series of musical works: a musical work, especially one of a numbered series by the same composer arranged to show the order in which they were written or cataloged. sotto voce [SAH-toh-VOH-chee], adverb or adjective: 1. Spoken low or in an undertone, as not to be overheard. 2. (Music) In very soft tones. Used chiefly as a direction. staccato as adverb: As rapid short detached notes (used as a musical direction) as adjective: Played as rapid short detached notes.  ;void(0)) MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS . . see: "MUSIC" (above) for related links [Of the harpsichord:] Like two skeletons copulating on a corrugated tin roof. --Sir Thomas Beecham (1879—1961) English conductor. In Harold Atkins & Archie Newman _Beecham Stories_ [1978]. 'Tis wonderful how soon a piano gets into a log hut on the frontier. You would think they found it under a pine stump. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882) American philosopher and poet. _Society and Solitude_ [1870] "Civilization" The piano is the easiest instrument to play in the beginning, and the hardest to master in the end. --Vladimir Horowitz (1904—1989) Russian pianist. In David Dubal _Evenings with Horowitz_ [1992]. Please bring my flute. --Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792—1822) English poet. Letter to his wife, informing her he had eloped with Mary Goodwin and asking her to join them. -- A soldier stationed in the South Pacific wrote to his wife in the States to please send him a harmonica to occupy his free time and keep his mind off of the local women. The wife complied and sent the best one she could find, along with several dozen lesson and music books. Rotated back home, he rushed to their home and thru the front door. "Oh darling" he gushed, "Come here, let me look at you, let me hold you ! Let's have a fine dinner out, then make love all night. I've missed your lovin' so much !" The wife, keeping her distance, said, "All in good time lover. First, let's hear you play that harmonica." -- ----- clarion [KLAIR-ee-uhn], noun: A kind of trumpet having a clear and shrill note.  MUSICIANS . . see: "MUSIC" (above) for related links ^ Greek orator and satirist Lucian described an ill-fated debut: 'Harmonides, a young flute player and scholar of Timotheus, at his first public performance began his solo with so violent a blast that he breathed his last breath into his flute, and died upon the spot.' --in Charles Burney _A General History of Music_ [4 vols., pub. 1776-89]. ^ [Of the Spice Girls:] The good thing about them is that you can look at them with the sound turned down. --George Harrison (1943—2001) English rock singer and pop guitarist and a member of The Beatles. In "Independent" [28 August 1997]. [On the death of Buddy Holly:] Something touched me deep inside The day the music died. --Don McLean (b. 1945) American songwriter and singer. "American Pie" [1972 song] If anyone has conducted a Beethoven performance, and then doesn't have to go to an osteopath, then there's something wrong. --Simon Rattle (b. 1955) English conductor. In "Guardian" [31 May 1990]. Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour. --Gioacchino Rossini (1792—1868) Italian composer. Said to Emile Naumann [April 1867], in E Naumann _Italienische Tondichter_ [1883]. - [Printed notice in a dancing saloon:] Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best. --anon., in Oscar Wilde _Impressions of America_ "Leadville" [c.1882-83]. - ----- busk (verb) ['bęsk] To play music or entertain on the street for money.  MYSTERY . . see: "MAGIC" see: "MIRACLES" see: "OBSCURITY" see: "SECRECY" see: "WONDER" see: "DECEPTION" for other related links The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavor in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is. --Albert Einstein (1879—1955) German-American physicist. "My Credo", Speech to the German League of Human Rights, Berlin [Fall, 1932]. The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him. --attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer (1788—1860) German philosopher. When I say that I know women, I mean that I know that I don't know them. Every single woman I ever knew is a puzzle to me, as I have no doubt she is to herself. --William Makepeace Thackeray (1811—1863) English novelist. _Mr. Brown's Letters_ (orig. pub. in "Punch" 1849.) Ah, sweet mystery of life At last I found thee. --Rida Johnson Young (1869—1926) American songwriter. "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life" [1910 song] ----- enigma (noun) [ę-'nig-ma] A very difficult riddle; an unsolvable mystery. inscrutable (adjective) [in-'skrut-ę-bęl] Unfathomable, incomprehensible, inexplicable, mysterious. Noun: inscrutability.  MYTH/MYTHOLOGY . . see: "SUPERNATURAL" Mythology, n. The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities, and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later. --Ambrose Bierce (1842—1914) American newspaperman, wit, and satirist. _The Devil's Dictionary_ [1911] About 850 B.C., Odysseus, the hero from Homer's "The Odyssey," faced a perilous nautical journey between Scylla, a terrifying sea monster, and Charybdis, a massive whirlpool. As Homer's story was passed down through the generations, it became immortalized in the metaphor, "Between Scylla and Charybdis," which was used to describe the careful path one must take to emerge from two troubling fronts. --"Between Scylla and Charybdis" John J. Castellani, in "The Wall Street Journal" [23 August 2005]. Later mythmakers invested the Middle Ages with a bogus aura of romance. The Pied Piper of Hamelin is an example. He was a real man, but there was nothing enchanting about him. Quite the opposite; he was horrible, a psychopath and pederast who, on June 20, 1484, spirited away 130 children in the Saxon village of Hemmel and used them in unspeakable ways. Accounts of the aftermath vary. According to some, his victims were never seen again; others told of dismembered little bodies found scattered in the forest underbrush or festooning the branches of trees. --William Manchester (1922—2004) American historian. _A World Lit Only by Fire_, p. 66 [1992] ----- Cerberus (noun) In Greek and Roman mythology, the three-headed dog that guards the entrance to Hades. chimera (noun) 1: A mythical fire-breathing female monster with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a snake's tail. Similar: monster, Gorgon 2: a fantastic, often horrible, idea or image produced by the mind. Synonyms: specter, apparition, phantasm, phantom Similar: monster, bugbear, bogeyman, hallucination, nightmare, bugaboo Cyclops (noun) In Greek mythology any of several giants having only one eye, in the middle of the forehead. Related: ogre euhemerism (noun) The theory that mythology has its origins in history, the gods being deified heroes of the past. Mnemosyne (noun) In Greek mythology, the goddess personifying memory, and mother of the Muses. end page | MACARTHUR (DOUGLAS) - MALICE | MAN - MARINES | MARRIAGE | MARTYRS - MAUGHAM (WILLIAM SOMERSET) | McCARTHY - MEANNESS | MEDIA (THE) | MEDICINE - MEMORIAL DAY | MEMORIES - MEMORY | MEN - MEN v. WOMEN | MENTAL ILLNESS - MILK | MIND (THE) - MINDING OWN BUSINESS | MINNESOTA - MISERY | MISFORTUNE - MISSOURI | MISTAKES | MISTAKEN IDENTITY - MODESTY | MONEY | MONROE - MOON | MORAL ASSASINATION - MORALITY | MORNING - MOUNTAINS | MOVIE DIALOGUE - MUSHROOMS | MUSIC - MYTHOLOGY | | H | I - J | K - L | M | N - O | P - Q | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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