If they say they don't like the way I play Beethoven, then I can swallow that, and maybe they're right. But if they don't like what I've written, then it's about me.
Stephen HoughRead
Live in the present moment. The past and future are nonexistent. Only the present can be grasped or, better, embraced.
Interpretation
Focus on the present as the past and future are not real; only the now can be experienced.
This quote emphasizes the importance of living in the present moment, suggesting that the past has already happened and the future is uncertain. It encourages individuals to engage fully with their current experience, as this is the only moment that can truly be felt, understood, and acted upon.
In practice
In a mindfulness workshop, this quote could inspire participants to focus on their breathing and sensations.
If they say they don't like the way I play Beethoven, then I can swallow that, and maybe they're right. But if they don't like what I've written, then it's about me.
Unlike sport, music is not about winning or keeping fit or promoting your town or school; it's about celebrating, to a level approaching ecstasy, the deepest human longings.
Life is an incurable disease leading to death, but it's also an unrequested gift, which, if we can manage to keep giving it away to others, can keep giving back everything to us.
All things of beauty can speak to us of God, and I'm very happy to listen to and be inspired by people of every religious background.
In Britten or Berg, there's a tension between the sweet and the sour, between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the tonal and the atonal, the happy and the sad. That, to me, is what all western art is about - that tension. It's why we want to say anything at all.
There are artists who delight listeners with their wild and daring individuality; there are others who uncover the written score with reverence. There are few who can do both.
To see the other side, to defend another people, not despite your tradition but because of it, is the heart of pluralism
No man dares to condemn the Christian faith today, because the Christian faith has not been tried. Not until men get rid of the thought that it is a poor machine, an expedient for saving them from suffering and pain; not until they get the grand idea of it as the great power of God present in and through the lives of men; not until then does Christianity enter upon its true trial and become ready to show what it can do.
My country's main exports are stolen cars and sadness.
The most striking contradiction of our civilization is the fundamental reverence for truth which we profess and the thorough-going disregard for it which we practice.
A man is not saved against his will, but he is made willing by the operation of the Holy Ghost. A mighty grace which he does not wish to resist enters into the man, disarms him, makes a new creature of him, and he is saved.
Just imagine how boring life would be if we were all the same. My idea of a perfect world is one in which we really appreciated each other's differences: Short, tall; Democrat, Republican; black, white; gay, straight-a world in which all of us are equal, but definitely not the same.
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