If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. … I cannot tell if I would have done any creative work of importance in music, but I do know that I get most joy in life out of my violin.
The really good music, whether of the East or of the West, cannot be analyzed.
Music is an ocean, but the repertory is hardly even a lake; it is a pond.
If good music has charms to soothe the savage breast, bad music has no less powerful spells for filling the mildest breast with rage, the happiest with horror and disgust. Oh, those mammy songs, those love longings, those loud hilarities! How was it possible that human emotions intrinsically decent could be so ignobly parodied.
After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
Accordion, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.
Clarionet, n. An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments that are worse than a clarionet -- two clarionets.
The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body. Always an orchestra, and just as music traverses walls, so sensuality traverses the body and reaches up to ecstasy.
It is not easy to determine the nature of music, or why any one should have a knowledge of it.