Good music is very close to primitive language.
Interpretation
Music expresses emotions and thoughts akin to how language conveys meaning.
Denis Diderot highlights the deep connection between music and language, suggesting that music communicates feelings and ideas in a fundamental, instinctive way that predates complex verbal communication. This perspective emphasizes the universal nature of music as a form of expression that transcends cultural and linguistic barriers, tapping into the primal aspects of human experience.
In practice
Using this quote in a discussion about the impact of music in cultural identity.
The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.
This root [the potato], no matter how much you prepare it, is tasteless and floury. It cannot pass for an agreeable food, but it supplies a food sufficiently abundant and sufficiently healthy for men who ask only to sustain themselves. The potato is criticized with reason for being windy, but what matters windiness for the vigorous organisms of peasants and laborers?
Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.
There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge... observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.
In order to get as much fame as one's father one has to much more able than he.
All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.
Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.
To be an actor you have to be a child.
I'm not performing anymore. I reveal myself to the audience. I reveal myself. That's the show now.
I don't want the money. I don't want the drama. I just want to do my show. I want to have fun again.
I do not believe in the art which is not the compulsive result of man's urge to open his heart
A film that aims low should not be praised for hitting that target.
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