We call those poets who are first to mark, Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn, Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark, While others only note that day is gone.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.Read
A few can touch the magic string, and noisy fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them!
Interpretation
This quote reflects the sorrow of those who fail to express their creativity and talents.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. laments the individuals who have the potential to create beauty and joy but never share it with the world. He contrasts the few who achieve fame and recognition through their artistry with the many who, despite having rich inner lives, pass away without ever having revealed their true gifts, leaving their 'music' unheard and unappreciated.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of pursuing one's passions.
We call those poets who are first to mark, Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn, Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark, While others only note that day is gone.
Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.
The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think.
Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don't you love a cushioned seat in a corner, by the fireside, with your slippers on your feet?
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that - one stitch at a time taken patiently and the pattern will come out all right like the embroidery.
True literature can exist only where it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy functionaries, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics.
I knew from the first moment I picked up a camera, on my first school assignment, what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I was going to find a way to travel the world and tell the stories of the people I met through photographs.
I think jazz is actually quite unforgiving in its disdain for nostalgia. It demands creativity and change at its highest level.
Art really has its source in the transcendent, the unmanifest field of pure consciousness, which is the non-changing, immortal field of all possibilities...When the awareness of the artist is in tune with this center of infinite creativity, his piece of art breathes fullness of life, nourishes the creator, the artist, and inspires his admirers with waves of bliss.
It is my dream to create an art which is filled with balance, purity and calmness, freed from a subject matter that is disconcerting or too attention-seeking. In my paintings, I wish to create a spiritual remedy, similar to a comfortable armchair which provides rest from physical expectation for the spiritually working, the businessman as well as the artist.
In some century to come, when the school children will whistle popular tunes in quarter-tones--when the diatonic scale will be as obsolete as the pentatonic is now--perhaps then these borderland experiences may be both easily expressed and readily recognized. But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.