Sweet bird, that shun the noise of folly, most musical, most melancholy!
Interpretation
The quote celebrates a bird that avoids the foolishness of the world, representing beauty and sorrow in its music.
In this quote, John Milton reflects on the idea of an idealized bird that escapes the chaos and foolishness of life. The 'sweet bird' symbolizes purity and a deep emotional resonance, contrasting with the noise of folly that surrounds it. This image evokes themes of beauty and sadness, suggesting that true artistry comes from a place of introspection and distance from the trivial pursuits of society.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of artistic expression amidst societal chaos.
They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, Waved over by that flaming brand, the gate With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms: Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide; They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way.
The stars, that nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps with everlasting oil, give due light to the misled and lonely traveller.
Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones.
Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely: and pined his loss
The end of all learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love and imitate Him.
Apt words have power to suage the tumors of a troubled mind.
Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.
On a morning from a Bogart movie, in a country where they turn back time. You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre, contemplating a crime. She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running like a watercolor in the rain. Don't bother asking for explanations, she'll just tell you that she came in the year of the cat.
The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some new approach, an alternative way of telling a story and manipulating characters; the novel is such a wonderfully flexible form.
In the theater, while you recognized that you were looking at a house, it was a house in quotation marks. On screen, the quotation marks tend to be blotted out by the camera.
You should play with real musicians; the best music comes from real people interacting with each other.
Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.
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