Yehudi Menuhin

Music creates order out of chaos: for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent, melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous.

Music lives and breathes to tell us who we are and what we face. It is a path between ourselves and the infinite.

The practice of yoga induces a primary sense of measure and proportion. Reduced to our own body, our first instrument, we learn to play it, drawing from it maximum resonance and harmony.

Improvisation is not the expression of accident but rather of the accumulated yearnings, dreams and wisdom of our very soul.

We are living in a world where the individual must learn to command the raw materials of expression. He must not be dependent all the time on the ready-made, the finished product. It's the transferring, the changing of the raw into what is the expression of your own self – the whole joy and satisfaction and frustration of life is built into this.

It is music that welds spiritual and sensual, that can convey ecstasy free of guilt, faith without dogma, love as homage, and a person at home with nature and the infinite.

Each human being has the eternal duty of turning what is hard and brutal into_x000D_ a tender and subtle offering, what is crude into an object of refinement, what_x000D_ is ugly into a thing of beauty, confrontation into collaboration, ignorance into_x000D_ knowledge, hereby rediscovering the child's dream of a creative reality_x000D_ incessantly renewed by death, the servant of life, and by life the servant of love

The violinist is that peculiarly human phenomenon distilled to a rare potency---half tiger,half poet.

The violinist is that peculiarly human phenomenon distilled to a rare potency - half tiger, half poet.

I can only think of music as something inherent in every human being - a birthright. Music coordinates mind, body and spirit.

If I wanted to play the violin, I had to work. Because anything that one wants to do really, and one loves doing, one must do everyday. It should be as easy to the artist and as natural as flying is to a bird. And you can’t imagine a bird saying well, I’m tired today, I’m not going to fly!

I would hate to think I am not an amature. An amateur is one who loves what he is doing. Very often, I'm afraid, the professional hates what he is doing. So, I'd rather be an amateur.