The only weapons I ever had were my cello and my baton.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how music and art can be powerful tools for expression and impact.
Pablo Casals emphasizes the profound influence of music in his life, suggesting that his cello and baton were not just instruments, but instruments of change. It conveys the idea that art can serve as a means of conveying messages, rather than resorting to violence or aggression, showcasing the transformative power of creativity.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of the arts in education.
Bach is the supreme genius of music... This man, who knows everything and feels everything, cannot write one note, however unimportant it may appear, which is anything but transcendent. He has reached the heart of every noble thought, and has done it in the most perfect way.
In music, in the sea, in a flower, in a leaf, in an act of kindness... I see what people call God in all these things.
The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?
The child must know that he is a miracle, that since the beginning of the world there hasn't been, and until the end of the world there will not be, another child like him.
I am an old man but in many senses a very young man. And this is what I want you to be, young, young all your life.
To the whole world you might be just one person, but to one person you might just be the whole world.
It is the writer’s job to make the play interesting. It is the actor’s job to make the performance truthful.
We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.
All I care about these days is painting — photography has never been more than a way into painting, a sort of instant drawing.
The attempt to divide art and politics is a bourgeois which says good poetry, art, cannot be political, but since everything is … political, even an artist or work that claims not to have any politics is making a political statement by that act.
Photos are profound because they have such short lives. They are more like fingerprints, dead leaves, rain puddles, or the corpses of flies.
So every creative act strives to attain an absolute status; it longs to create a world of beauty to triumph over chaos and convert it to order.
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