Sunday, August 2, 2020

A Garland of Quotes

Lightening Storm in My City (just to have a decorative image)
  • "In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody." --OSCAR WILDE
  • “The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.” ― Horace Walpole
  • “The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful. ― Edward Gibbon
  • "When you are twenty you worry about what people think of you; when you are forty you don't care what people think of you; and when you are sixty you realize most people aren't thinking about you at all."  --Anonymous
  • "Hey, what's going on guys?" --every other YouTube commentator. Why they have all decided to start with this really idiotic rhetorical question is a mystery to me.
  • B. B. King from the stage at the beginning of a concert at Sing Sing Prison in 1973: "I think some of you already know the blues."
The perfect envoi would be the Symphony No. 15 by Shostakovich because it not only quotes from his own previous works but also from Rossini (the Overture to "William Tell"), Glinka, Rachmaninoff, Mahler and Wagner! This is from the new set of excellent videos filmed in the Salle Pleyel in Paris with Valery Gergiev conducting the Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theater.


3 comments:

Will Wilkin said...

"The world is tragedy to those who feel, and comedy to those who think."

I had that quote up on the wall in my HS history classroom some years ago. Attributed to a Greek or Roman philosopher...I can't remember.

Another was "Control of impulse is the root of all will and character."

Another was "It's a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder."

Bryan Townsend said...

The tragedy/comedy quote is indeed from Horace Walpole. It is from one of his letters.

Your last is from a Lennon lyric, is it not?

Bryan Townsend said...

Now I remember, it is from McCartney's "Hey Jude."