Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
W. H. AudenRead
Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Music serves as a powerful medium for experiencing and understanding the passage of time.
In this quote, W. H. Auden suggests that music provides a unique way to perceive and process time. Through its rhythms, melodies, and themes, music captures moments and emotions, allowing us to reflect on our experiences and the flow of life in a profound way.
Themes
MusicTimeArtExperienceEmotion
In practice
Example use cases
A speaker at a conference on the role of music in society could use this quote to emphasize its impact on human experience.
More from W. H. Auden
All quotes βThat the speech of self-disclosure should be translatable seems to me very odd, but I am convinced that it is. The conclusion that I draw is that the only quality which all human being without exception possess is uniqueness: any characteristic, on the other hand, which one individual can be recognized as having in common with another, like red hair or the English language, implies the existence of other individual qualities which this classification excludes.
W. H. AudenRead
Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do; it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire; it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire.
W. H. AudenRead
History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
W. H. AudenRead
'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
W. H. AudenRead
Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.
W. H. AudenRead
Similar quotes
Living here on Earth, we breathe the rhythms of a universe that extends infinitely above us. When resonant harmonies arise between this vast outer cosmos and the inner human cosmos, poetry is born.
Daisaku IkedaRead
I was always the first person in the theater all the time. If it was an eight-o'clock curtain, I was here at five-thirty, and it wasn't that I needed to vocalize, because I was all warmed up. I couldn't wait for it to begin.
Beverly SillsRead
In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that cannot be explained.
Georges BraqueRead
Music that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.
Aaron CoplandRead
I'm here to make good pictures. If I don't see it, I won't touch it. I may not make a good picture, but I still gotta believe in it!
William WylerRead
Novels are political because in them, we try to identify with people who are not like us. And, in that sense, I like the first-person singular because I have to imitate accurately the voice of someone who is not like me. The third-person singular gives me an authority over a character.
Orhan PamukRead