“
But we were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments? Or our treaties whatever they may be worth; our symphonies however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted into battlefields; our dreams however rarely they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses.
”
”
Robert Ardrey (African Genesis: A Personal Investigation Into the Animal Origins and nature of Man)
“
Perfection: a collection of a variety of pieces that, when viewed and felt individually, are difficult and confusing; but when brought together as one, create a perfect picture. Symphony, harmony, serenity.
”
”
C. JoyBell C.
“
The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with out friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)
“
Sometimes, it is true, a sense of isolation enfolds me like a cold mist as I sit alone and wait at life’s shut gate. Beyond there is light, and music, and sweet companionship; but I may not enter. Fate, silent, pitiless, bars the way…Silence sits immense upon my soul. Then comes hope with a smile and whispers, ‘there is joy is self-forgetfulness.’ So I try to make the light in others’ eyes my sun, the music in others; ears my symphony, the smile on others’ lips my happiness.
”
”
Helen Keller (The Open Door)
“
It is easier to understand if you think of it in terms of music. Sometimes a man enjoys a symphony. Elsetimes he finds a jig more suited to his taste.
The same holds true for lovemaking. One type is suited to the deep cushions of a twilight forest glade. Another comes quite naturally tangled in the sheets of narrow beds upstairs in inns. Each woman is like an instrument, waiting to be learned, loved, and finely played, to have at last her own true music made.
Some might take offense at this way of seeing things, not understanding how a trouper views his music. They might think I degrade women. They might consider me callous, or boorish, or crude.
But those people do not understand love, or music, or me.
”
”
Patrick Rothfuss (The Wise Man’s Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2))
“
He suggested that Joe think of a well-rowed race as a symphony, and himself as just one player in the orchestra. If one fellow in an orchestra was playing out of tune, or playing at a different tempo, the whole piece would naturally be ruined. That’s the way it was with rowing. What mattered more than how hard a man rowed was how well everything he did in the boat harmonized with what the other fellows were doing.
”
”
Daniel James Brown (The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics)
“
To deny the existence of God would be to close your eyes to the beauty around you, to close your ears to the symphony of nature, to close your nostrils to the scents wafting on the breeze, to close your mouth to the delicacies of nourishment, to close your hands to the feel of luxury, to close your mind to the ability to think, and to close your heart to the only love that can penetrate the depths of the soul. For in Him all things consist, in Him we live, and move, and have our being, and without Him we cannot help but be fools.
”
”
J.E.B. Spredemann (A Secret of the Heart (Amish Secrets #3))
“
The symbol of a drama, a symphony, or a dance is useful to correct a certain absurdity which may arise if we talk too much of God planning and creating the world for good and then being frustrated by the free will of the creatures. This may raise the ridiculous idea that the Fall to God by surprise and upset His plan, or else – more ridiculous still – that God planned the whole thing for conditions which, He well knew, were never going to be realized. In fact, of course, God saw the crucifixion in the act of creating the first nebulae. The world is a dance in which good, descending from God, is disturbed by evil arising from the creatures, and the resulting conflict is resolved by God's own assumption of the suffering nature which evil produces.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)
“
Poets represent love as sculptors design beauty, as musicians create melody; that is to say, endowed with an exquisite nervous organization, they gather up with discerning ardor the purest elements of life, the most beautiful lines of matter, and the most harmonious voices of nature. There lived, it is said, at Athens a great number of beautiful girls; Praxiteles drew them all one after another; then from these diverse types of beauty, each one of which had its defects, he formed a single faultless beauty and created Venus. The man who first created a musical instrument, and who gave to harmony its rules and its laws, had for a long time listened to the murmuring of reeds and the singing of birds. Thus the poets, who understand life, after knowing much of love, more or less transitory, after feeling that sublime exaltation which real passion can for the moment inspire, eliminating from human nature all that degrades it, created the mysterious names which through the ages fly from lip to lip: Daphnis and Chloe, Hero and Leander, Pyramus and Thisbe.
To try to find in real life such love as this, eternal and absolute, is but to seek on public squares a woman such as Venus, or to expect nightingales to sing the symphonies of Beethoven.
”
”
Alfred de Musset (The Confession of a Child of the Century)
“
...some have asked me what understanding of Nature one shapes from so strange a year? I would answer that one's first appreciation is a sense that creation is still going on, that the creative forces are as great and as active to-day as they have ever been, and that to-morrow's morning will be as heroic as any of the world. Creation is here and now. So near is man to the creative pageant, so much a part is he of the endless and incredible experiment, that any glimpse he may have will be but the revelation of a moment, a solitary note heard in a symphony thundering through debatable existences of time. Poetry is as necessary to comprehension as science. It is as impossible to live without reverence as it is without joy
”
”
Henry Beston (The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod)
“
When we think of the word home, what is conjured is an image of tranquility, of safety and support, something that is less physical in nature and more emotional.
”
”
Aysha Akhtar (Our Symphony with Animals: On Health, Empathy, and Our Shared Destinies)
“
Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatures because of the advantage they confer for the continuing survival of the species.
”
”
Lewis Thomas (Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony)
“
Feeling alone or abandoned? Nature sings a symphony of God's presence every moment of the day, from the blue of the sky to the songbird's warble; from the brush of the wind on your face to the cooing of a baby; from the heart beating within your chest to the twinkling of a star's light in the evening sky, they all remind us that He is always with us. And because He is with us, He hears our every cry and every prayer.
”
”
Ron Lambros (All My Love, Jesus: Personal Reminders From the Heart of God)
“
She lifted her head in surprise, following his line of sight above the tree line. Beyond the distant peaks, a green and blue symphony of lights had begun. It rippled and shimmered like sunshine on water, leaving Rich blinking back tears. He'd read something about this but had never seen it before.
“It's the aurora borealis,” Lou said quietly. “Northern lights.
”
”
Danika Stone (Edge of Wild)
“
In this life, all symphonies remain unfinished. Our deep longings are never really satisfied. What this means, among other things, is that we are not restful creatures who sometimes get restless, fulfilled people who sometimes are dissatisfied, serene people who sometimes experience disquiet. Rather, we are restless people who occasionally find rest, dissatisfied people who occasionally find fulfillment, and disquieted people who occasionally find serenity. We do not naturally default into rest, satisfaction, and quiet but into their opposite.
”
”
Ronald Rolheiser (The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality)
“
May the stars guide you. May the winds cleanse all ills and remain at your back. May the earth protect you and give you strength. May fire guard you, and rain refresh you, may all nature be your friend until we meet again in this place.
”
”
Elizabeth Haydon (The Merchant Emperor (Symphony of Ages, #7))
“
You must feel the rustle of the leaves. You must feel the rumble of the clouds. The flowers sing their own songs. The bees create their own rhythm. The waves serenade with distinct notes. The breeze captivates in its own chords. And the moon mesmerizes in her own melodies. You must understand the symphony of nature.
”
”
Avijeet Das
“
The world is a glorious bounty. There is more food than can be eaten if we would limit our numbers to those who can be cherished, there are more beautiful girls than can be dreamed of, more children than we can love, more laughter than can be endured, more wisdom than can be absorbed. Canvas and pigments lie in wait, stone, wood, and metal are ready for sculpture, random noise is latent for symphonies, sites are gravid for cities, institutions lie in the wings ready to solve our most intractable problems, parables of moving power remain unformulated and yet, the world is finally unknowable.
”
”
Ian L. McHarg (Design With Nature)
“
A bird that sings too much will only lose its voice, but a bird that does not sing at all will lose its symphonies.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
world is sensation. We drift in an ocean of sensory stimuli: motion, color, texture, shape, heat, cold, natural symphonies of sound, an infinite number of scents, tastes beyond the human ability to catalogue. Nothing but sensation endures. Living things all die. Great cities do not last.
”
”
Dean Koontz (Intensity)
“
Nature is like a work by Bach or Beethoven, often starting with a central theme and making countless variations on it that are scattered throughout the symphony. By this criterion, it appears that strings are not fundamental concepts in nature.
”
”
Michio Kaku (Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension)
“
A rainbow is a storm’s masterpiece.
A seed is a flower’s masterpiece.
A rock is a diamond’s masterpiece.
A butterfly is a caterpillar’s masterpiece.
A flame is a spark’s masterpiece.
A drop is an ocean’s masterpiece.
A brick is a mansion’s masterpiece.
A cell is a body’s masterpiece.
A nest is a bird’s masterpiece.
A flame is a spark’s masterpiece.
A note is a symphony’s masterpiece.
A flower is a garden’s masterpiece.
Herbs are a plant’s masterpiece.
Honey is a bee’s masterpiece.
Silk is a spider’s masterpiece.
Wool is a sheep’s masterpiece.
Perfume is a flower’s masterpiece.
Syrup is a tree’s masterpiece.
Wine is a grape’s masterpiece.
Fruit is a seed’s masterpiece.
Pearls are an oyster’s masterpiece.
Beauty is a sky’s masterpiece.
Charm is a star’s masterpiece.
Spring is nature’s masterpiece.
Time is eternity’s masterpiece.
Energy is light’s masterpiece.
Heat is fire’s masterpiece.
Knowledge is truth’s masterpiece.
Thoughts are the mind’s masterpiece.
Desires are the heart’s masterpiece.
Experiences are the soul’s masterpiece.
Intelligence is nature’s masterpiece.
Enlightenment is wisdom’s masterpiece.
The world is the universe’s masterpiece.
Life is the Divine One’s masterpiece.
Awareness is life’s masterpiece.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
Whales feel cohesion, a sense of community, of loyalty. The distress call of a lone whale is enough to prompt its entire pod to rush to its side- a gesture that lands them nose to nose in the same sand. It's a fatal symphony of echolocation, a siren call to the sympathetic.
”
”
Marina Keegan (The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories)
“
This life may be compared to playing one instrument in a large orchestra. Naturally you cannot play all the instruments at the same time. You can only focus on your part of the beautiful symphony, although the entire orchestra and all the music comprises the totality of who you really are.
”
”
Dolores Cannon (The Convoluted Universe - Book Two)
“
Within the grip of winter, it is almost impossible to imagine the spring. The gray perished landscape is shorn of color. Only bleakness meets the eye; everything seems severe and edged. Winter is the oldest season; it has some quality of the absolute. Yet beneath the surface of winter, the miracle of spring is already in preparation; the cold is relenting; seeds are wakening up. Colors are beginning to imagine how they will return. Then, imperceptibly, somewhere one bug opens and the symphony of renewal is no longer reversible. From the black heart of winter a miraculous, breathing plenitude of color emerges.
The beauty of nature insists on taking its time. Everything is prepared. Nothing is rushed. The rhythm of emergence is a gradual slow beat always inching its way forward; change remains faithful to itself until the new unfolds in the full confidence of true arrival. Because nothing is abrupt, the beginning of spring nearly always catches us unawares. It is there before we see it; and then we can look nowhere without seeing it.
”
”
John O'Donohue (To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings)
“
Hey fellow busy human! Do not forget to take a quick pause to feel the magic of fresh air; to enjoy the change of seasons; to take a deep refreshing sigh standing under a tree; to lull your ears with bird's melodious symphonies; to sense the cool rain water; to walk barefoot on mud; to live like a real human.
”
”
RESHMA CHEKNATH UMESH
“
Following her instructions, I joined her in the chopping and mixing. The magical smell of pickling spices wound around us and it wasn't long before we were in another world. I was suddenly immersed in the hand-written recipes Mother resurrected from the back of the Hoosier cabinet--in the cheesecloth filled with mustard seed and pungent dill. As we followed the recipes her mother had followed and her mother before that, we talked--as the afternoon wore on I was listening to preserve the stories in my mind. 'I can remember watching my grandmother and mother rushing around this same old kitchen, putting up all kinds of vegetables--their own hand-sown, hand-picked crops--for the winter. My grandmother would tell her stories about growing up right here, on this piece of land--some were hilarious and some were tragic.' Pots still steamed on the stove, but Mother's attention seemed directed backwards as she began to speak about the past. She spoke with a slow cadence, a rhythm punctuated (or maybe inspired) by the natural symphony around us.
”
”
Leslie Goetsch (Back Creek)
“
Albert Einstein was asked one day by a friend “Do you believe that absolutely everything can be expressed scientifically?” “Yes, it would be possible,” he replied, “but it would make no sense. It would be description without meaning—as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation in wave pressure.” RONALD W. CLARK, Einstein: The Life and Times
”
”
David Suzuki (The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature)
“
Tamsen lay listening to the crashing of the waves on the beach, the symphony of the ocean competing with the orchestral maneuvers of the first birds singing in the dawn.
”
”
Toni Kenyon (Catch)
“
Symphony of peace is the murmuring sound of a river! And with the shimmering water I feel my limbs’ ecstatic quiver
”
”
Munia Khan
“
Whenever you are with me, life plays a beautiful symphony!
”
”
Avijeet Das
“
Est-ce que vraiment, disait-elle, la terre est aussi belle que le racontent les oiseaux ?
”
”
André Gide (La Symphonie pastorale)
“
J’écoute si bien les oiseaux; je crois que je comprends tout ce qu’ils disent.
”
”
André Gide (La Symphonie pastorale)
“
her eyes were met with nothing more than trees; their leaves, a symphony of color: reds, oranges, and golds as nature pushed forward into the slumber of winter.
”
”
M.S. Willis (Madeleine Abducted (The Estate, #1))
“
Nature helps us connect with higher levels of consciousness, beauty, aromas, and pleasant sounds, promote an exaltation of the spirit because we are part of this beautiful symphony. When we pay attention to it, we synchronize with the dance of life. And when we are in tune with the dance of life, we can access the infinite power of creation that is our birthright.
”
”
Caro Briones (The Extraterrestrial Girl)
“
The sap rises and, itself a mixture of elements, flowers in a mixture of tones; the trees, the rocks, the granites cast their reflections in the mirror of the water; all the transparent objects seize and imprison colour reflections, both close and distant, as the light passes through them. As the star of day moves, the tones change in value, but always they respect their mutual sympathies and natural hatreds, and continue to live in harmony by reciprocal concessions. The shadows move slowly and drive before them or blot out the tones as the light itself, changing position, sets others vibrating. These mingle their reflections, and, modifying their qualities by casting over them transparent and borrowed glazes, multiply to infinity their melodious marriages and make them easier to achieve. When the great ball of fire sinks into the waters, red fanfares fly in all directions, a blood-red harmony spreads over the horizon, green turns to a deep red. But soon vast blue shadows chase rhythmically before them the crowd of orange and soft tones, which are like the distant and muted echoes of the light. This great symphony of today, which is the eternally renewed variation of the symphony of yesterday, this succession of melodies, where the variety comes always from the infinite, this complex hymn is called colour.
”
”
Charles Baudelaire (Selected Writings on Art and Literature)
“
They are the appreciators of genius, and as art critic Clive Bell said, “The essential characteristic of a highly civilized society is not that it is creative but that it is appreciative.” By that measure, Vienna was the most highly civilized society to grace the planet. Mozart didn’t compose for an audience but for audiences. One audience was the wealthy patrons—nobles, typically, including the emperor himself. Another audience was the city’s finicky music critics. A third was the public at large, middle-class concertgoers or dust-caked street sweepers attending an open-air, and free, performance. Musical Vienna was not a solo performance. It was a symphony, often harmonious, occasionally discordant, never dull. Mozart was no freak of nature. He was part of a milieu, a musical ecosystem so rich and varied it practically
”
”
Eric Weiner (The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley)
“
Dedication To all who now, or have ever, called Michigan home. Its natural, glimmering beauty and fascinating history had me stuck in an almost permanent daydream. It is easy to love a place with so much magic.
”
”
Alexandria V. Nolan (Starlight Symphonies of Oak and Glass: A Novel of the Great Lakes)
“
You don't understand that one can be an atheist, one can not know whether God exists or why, and at the same time know that man does not live in nature but in history, and that in present-day understanding it was founded by Christ, that its foundation is the Gospel. And what is history? It is the setting in motion of centuries of work at the gradual unriddling of death and its eventual overcoming. Hence the discovery of mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves, hence the writing of symphonies. It is impossible to move on in that direction without a certain uplift. These discoveries call for spiritual equipment. The grounds for it are contained in the Gospel. They are these. First, love of one's neighbor, that highest form of living energy, overflowing man's heart and demanding to be let out and spent, and then the main component parts of modern man, without which he is unthinkable-- namely, the idea of the free person and the idea of life as sacrifice.
”
”
Boris Pasternak (Doctor Zhivago)
“
It is the fire that consumes me;
It is an inexplicable love,
It is the rain that calms me;
It is a melody from above.
It is the wind that humbles me;
It is everywhere and nowhere,
It is the sand that fuels me;
It is the artistry of nature.
I’m consumed by what I am,
I’m calmed by a riotous noise,
I’m humbled through arrogance,
I’m fueled by what is in poise.
I’ve much cherished the mystifying,
I’ve heard the unreal symphonies,
I’ve been moved by the inevitable,
And I’ve hailed the epiphanies.
”
”
Zubair Ahsan
“
Schopenhauer suggests that just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself of which your consciousness is unaware, so, too, your whole life is composed by the will within you. And just as people whom you will have met apparently by mere chance became leading agents in the structuring of your life, so, too, will you have served unknowingly as an agent, giving meaning to the lives of others. The whole thing gears together like one big symphony, with everything unconsciously structuring everything else. And Schopenhauer concludes that it is as though our lives were the features of the one great dream of a single dreamer in which all the dream characters dream, too; so that everything links to everything else, moved by the one will to life which is the universal will in nature.
”
”
Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth)
“
I look over to him to see his gaze fixed on my hair just as he reaches up and rubs one of my curls between his fingers. “I like it like this.” “Clean?” “Natural,” he says, taking his coffee as a tinge of exhilaration shoots up my spine. “You can’t be serious.” “I am.
”
”
Kate Stewart (Reverse (The Bittersweet Symphony Duet, #2))
“
The answers to your problems lie all around you. The keys to your self-discovery are waiting to be found in each sunset, each pair of eyes, each breath of fresh air. Listen to the symphony of life and you will hear yourself. Find the beauty of nature and you have found your soul.
”
”
Vironika Tugaleva
“
According to string theory, if we could somehow magnify a point particle, we would actually see a small vibrating string. In fact, according to this theory, matter is nothing but the harmonies created by this vibrating string. Since there are an infinite number of harmonies that can be composed for the violin, there are an infinite number of forms of matter that can be constructed out of vibrating strings. This explains the richness of the particles in nature. Likewise, the laws of physics can be compared to the laws of harmony allowed on the string. The universe itself, composed of countless vibrating strings, would then be comparable to a symphony.
”
”
Michio Kaku (Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension)
“
We know, however, that the mind is capable of understanding these matters in all their complexity and in all their simplicity. A ball flying through the air is responding to the force and direction with which it was thrown, the action of gravity, the friction of the air which it must expend its energy on overcoming, the turbulence of the air around its surface, and the rate and direction of the ball's spin. And yet, someone who might have difficulty consciously trying to work out what 3 x 4 x 5 comes to would have no trouble in doing differential calculus and a whole host of related calculations so astoundingly fast that they can actually catch a flying ball.
People who call this "instinct" are merely giving the phenomenon a name, not explaining anything. I think that the closest that human beings come to expressing our understanding of these natural complexities is in music. It is the most abstract of the arts - it has no meaning or purpose other than to be itself.
Every single aspect of a piece of music can be represented by numbers. From the organization of movements in a whole symphony, down through the patterns of pitch and rhythm that make up the melodies and harmonies, the dynamics that shape the performance, all the way down to the timbres of the notes themselves, their harmonics, the way they change over time, in short, all the elements of a noise that distinguish between the sound of one person piping on a piccolo and another one thumping a drum - all of these things can be expressed by patterns and hierarchies of numbers. And in my experience the more internal relationships there are between the patterns of numbers at different levels of the hierarchy, however complex and subtle those relationships may be, the more satisfying and, well, whole, the music will seem to be. In fact the more subtle and complex those relationships, and the further they are beyond the grasp of the conscious mind, the more the instinctive part of your mind - by which I mean that part of your mind that can do differential calculus so astoundingly fast that it will put your hand in the right place to catch a flying ball- the more that part of your brain revels in it. Music of any complexity (and even "Three Blind Mice" is complex in its way by the time someone has actually performed it on an instrument with its own individual timbre and articulation) passes beyond your conscious mind into the arms of your own private mathematical genius who dwells in your unconscious responding to all the inner complexities and relationships and proportions that we think we know nothing about.
Some people object to such a view of music, saying that if you reduce music to mathematics, where does the emotion come into it? I would say that it's never been out of it.
”
”
Douglas Adams (Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (Dirk Gently, #1))
“
Our right brain hemisphere (transcendent mind) supports us in acknowledging our infinite potential when we understand our true nature and origins, and the importance of our free will. The latter gives us the ability to choose to live like an interdependent whole, within which, we are as musical notes inside a great symphony or the various shades of color in a painting, where our role is as important as that of every component but not better than any other
”
”
Ivan Figueroa-Otero
“
It is easier to understand if you think of it in terms of music. Sometimes a man enjoys a symphony. Elsetimes he finds a jig more suited to his taste. The same holds true for lovemaking. One type is suited to the deep cushions of a twilight forest glade. Another comes quite naturally tangled in the sheets of narrow beds upstairs in inns. Each woman is like an instrument, waiting to be learned, loved, and finely played, to have at last her own true music made.
”
”
Patrick Rothfuss (The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2))
“
...and in the spell
Of Proust's great paragraphs we hear and see
The ocean into which we all, as he did,
Must sink back, our achievements left behind –
Whether a necessary task fulfilled
Or else whole symphonies – and be reclaimed
By nature, which has no mind of its own
But simply makes us welcome, as the ashes
Of Maria Callas, spread on the Agean,
Were first a cloud, and then a mist, then nothing
But an everlasting song reduced to atoms
Which, though they drift apart, are still together
In the memories of those of us who live.
”
”
Clive James (Gate of Lilacs: A Verse Commentary on Proust)
“
Golf is the great conductor of life's symphony. Not in my lifetime have I seen anything with more ability to change the course of futures. It has the ability to build lasting relationships in a few short hours, promote executives, fund projects, build teams, break down barriers, and create an environment of deal-making, stress relief, and wellness. It's the one place where we willingly shut off our phones, turn away from distraction and become one with nature and ourselves. -Thank you for being a part of our symphony, Network & Golf
”
”
Colleen Ferrary Bader
“
The artist reconstructs the world to his plan. The symphonies of
nature know no rests. The world is never quiet; even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in
vibrations that escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a
chord, never a melody. Music exists, however, in which symphonies are completed, where melody gives
its form to sounds that by themselves have none, and where, finally, a particular arrangement of notes
extracts from natural disorder a unity that is satisfying to the mind and the heart.
”
”
Albert Camus (The Rebel)
“
Three miles from my adopted city
lies a village where I came to peace.
The world there was a calm place,
even the great Danube no more
than a pale ribbon tossed onto the landscape
by a girl’s careless hand. Into this stillness
I had been ordered to recover.
The hills were gold with late summer;
my rooms were two, plus a small kitchen,
situated upstairs in the back of a cottage
at the end of the Herrengasse.
From my window I could see onto the courtyard
where a linden tree twined skyward —
leafy umbilicus canted toward light,
warped in the very act of yearning —
and I would feed on the sun as if that alone
would dismantle the silence around me.
At first I raged. Then music raged in me,
rising so swiftly I could not write quickly enough
to ease the roiling. I would stop
to light a lamp, and whatever I’d missed —
larks flying to nest, church bells, the shepherd’s
home-toward-evening song — rushed in, and I
would rage again.
I am by nature a conflagration;
I would rather leap
than sit and be looked at.
So when my proud city spread
her gypsy skirts, I reentered,
burning towards her greater, constant light.
Call me rough, ill-tempered, slovenly— I tell you,
every tenderness I have ever known
has been nothing
but thwarted violence, an ache
so permanent and deep, the lightest touch
awakens it. . . . It is impossible
to care enough. I have returned
with a second Symphony
and 15 Piano Variations
which I’ve named Prometheus,
after the rogue Titan, the half-a-god
who knew the worst sin is to take
what cannot be given back.
I smile and bow, and the world is loud.
And though I dare not lean in to shout
Can’t you see that I’m deaf? —
I also cannot stop listening.
”
”
Rita Dove
“
Blind Heart’s.
In the circle of life, a sorrowful tale,
Where death and life dance an endless wail.
Hungry eyes search for morsels to devour,
Survival's cruel game with each passing hour.
Angst and fear grip hearts, cold and bleak,
Aching souls yearning for solace they seek.
In a world that lacks fairness, unjust and unkind,
Tears fall like rain, leaving scars behind.
Hatred and love, a twisted embrace,
In this nature of existence, a bitter chase.
For when darkness looms,
Love hides in despair,
Yet hate finds its mark,
leaving hearts threadbare.
We,
people who turn blind eyes to the cries,
As if suffering and anguish were mere lies.
Ignoring the plight that surrounds us all,
Humanity's downfall, a deafening fall.
But what of the animals, creatures so dear?
Caught in this cycle, their voices unclear.
Silently they suffer, their pain left unheard,
In nature's cruel script, an unspoken word.
Children on ground, black and white
Dying, Drying while survival trying.
Scars defining not body, but soul
Oh light, forgive us Lord.
The circle spins on, in sorrow it turns,
A tragic symphony,
where hope rarely burns.
In this poem of life,
where sadness takes hold,
Let us open our eyes,
let compassion unfold.
”
”
Astivan Mirza
“
I hate Toscanini. I’ve never heard him in a concert hall, but I’ve heard enough of his recordings. What he does to music is terrible in my opinion. He chops it up into a hash and then pours a disgusting sauce over it. Toscanini ‘honoured’ me by conducting my symphonies. I heard those records, too, and they’re worthless. I’ve read about Toscanini’s conducting style and his manner of conducting a rehearsal. The people who describe this disgraceful behaviour are for some reason delighted by it. I simply can’t understand what they find delightful. I think it’s outrageous, not delightful. He screams and curses the musicians and makes scenes in the most shameless manner. The poor musicians have to put up with all this nonsense or be sacked. And they even begin to see ‘something in it’. (…) Toscanini sent me his recording of m Seventh Symphony and hearing it made me very angry. Everything is wrong. The spirit and the character and the tempi. It’s a sloppy, hack job. I wrote him a letter expressing my views. I don’t know if he ever got it; maybe he did and pretended not to – that would be completely in keeping with his vain and egoistic style. Why do I think that Toscanini didn’t let it be known that I wrote to him? Because much later I received a letter from America: I was elected to the Toscanini Society! They must have thought that I was a great fan of the maestro’s. I began receiving records on a regular basis: all new recordings by Toscanini. My only comfort is that at least I always have a birthday present handy. Naturally, I wouldn’t give something like that to a friend. But to an acquaintance-why not? It pleases them and it’s less trouble for me. That’s one of life’s most difficult problems- what to give for a birthday or anniversary to a person you don’t particularly like, don’t know very well, and don’t respect. Conductors are too often rude and conceited tyrants. And in my youth I often had to fight fierce battles with them, battles for my music and my dignity.
”
”
Dmitri Shostakovich (Testimony: The Memoirs)
“
I want to tell you what I think the sex act is. I think it is like a lovely piece of music, conceived quietly in a background of mutual affection and understanding, made possible by instincts which lean toward each other as naturally as the sunflower slowly turning its lovely face to the sun. I think it is an aria of the sex symphony; an aria which begins beautifully certain of its rightness, moves with that certainty to a distinct tempo of feeling, sings itself happily, steadily, working, working, to a screaming, bursting climax of indescribable beauty and rapture and then throbs, spent and grateful in a re-dedication for the next movement of its perfection.
”
”
Terry Teachout (Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington)
“
In the west the prevalent feeling is that nature belongs exclusively to inanimate things and to beasts, that there is a sudden unaccountable break where human-nature begins. According to it, everything that is low in the scale of beings is merely nature, and whatever has the stamp of perfection on it, intellectual or moral, is human-nature. It is like dividing the bud and the blossom into two separate categories, and putting their grace to the credit of two different and antithetical principles. But the Indian mind never has any hesitation in acknowledging its kinship with nature, its unbroken relation with all.
The fundamental unity of creation was not simply a philosophical speculation for India; it was her life-object to realise this great harmony in feeling and in action. With mediation and service, with a regulation of life, she cultivated her consciousness in such a way that everything had a spiritual meaning to her. The earth, water and light, fruits and flowers, to her were not merely physical phenomena to be turned to use and then left aside. They were necessary to her in the attainment of her ideal of perfection, as every note is necessary to the completeness of the symphony. India intuitively felt that the essential fact of this world has a vital meaning for us; we have to be fully alive to it and establish a conscious relation with it, not merely impelled by scientific curiosity or greed of material advantage, but realising it in the spirit of sympathy, with a large feeling of joy and peace.
”
”
Rabindranath Tagore (Sadhana)
“
The Blood player could acquire a Rose item, but only by handing over an atrocity, thus leaving himself with less ammunition and the Rose player with more. If he was a skilful player he could attack the Rose side by means of the atrocities in his possession, loot the human achievement, and transfer it to his side of the board. The player who managed to retain the most human achievements by Time’s Up was the winner. With points off, naturally, for achievements destroyed through his own error and folly and cretinous play. The exchange rates – one Mona Lisa equalled Bergen-Belsen, one Armenian genocide equalled the Ninth Symphony plus three Great Pyramids – were suggested, but there was room for haggling. To do this you needed to know the numbers – the total number of corpses for the atrocities, the latest open-market price for the artworks; or, if the artworks had been stolen, the amount paid out by the insurance policy. It was a wicked game.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1))
“
As soon as I was immersed in my work, cutting up the kabocha squash for the winter butternut squash soup, dicing the carrots to braise in orange juice, and starting another giant vat of chicken stock, I allowed the aromas and natural muscle rhythms of the kitchen to sweep me up in what I loved. I calmed down and experienced--- as corny as it might sound--- the joy of cooking.
I was in love with food, obsessed with it. Food wasn't just fuel; it could heal a broken heart, it could entertain, it could bring you home. Magic happened when a perfectly balanced dish came together. A beautiful symphony of flavors. Salty, sweet, acidic, crunchy, colorful, soft, hard, warm, cold. It should take you on a journey. Once I had an Italian dish called Genovese, consisting of braised rabbit over thick noodles with a carrot and pea sauce. It was so beautiful, earthy, clever, and delicious, and it warmed you from the inside. It was what I liked to call a "circle of life plate.
”
”
Victoria Benton Frank (My Magnolia Summer)
“
We must remember with Heine that Aristophanes is the God of this ironic earth, and that all argument is apparently vitiated from the start by the simple fact that Wagner and a rooster are given an analogous method of making love. And therefore it seems impeccable logic to say that all that is most unlike the rooster is the most spiritual part of love. All will agree on that, schisms only arise when one tries to decide what does go farthest from the bird's automatic mechanism. Certainly not a Dante-Beatrice affair which is only the negation of the rooster in terms of the swooning bombast of adolescence, the first onslaught of a force which the sufferer cannot control or inhabit with all the potentialities of his body and soul. But the rooster is troubled by no dreams of a divine orgy, no carnival-loves like Beethoven's Fourth Symphony, no heroic and shining lust gathering and swinging into a merry embrace like the third act of Siegfried. It is desire in this sense that goes farthest from the animal.
”
”
Jack Lindsay (Lysistrata)
“
If efficient copying is adaptive, such that natural selection should favor greater and greater reliance on social as opposed to asocial learning, then the tournament also establishes that a number of characteristics strongly evocative of human culture will follow automatically. With increasing copying inevitably comes greater behavioral diversity; the retention of cultural knowledge for long periods of time; conformity; and rapid turnover in behavior such as fads, fashions, and changes in technology. Provided copying errors or innovation introduce new behavioral variants, copying can simultaneously increase the knowledge base of a population and reduce the range of exploited behavior to a core of high-performance variants. Similar reasoning accounts for the observation that copying can lead to knowledge being retained over long periods of time, yet trigger rapid turnover in behavior. Low-level performance of suboptimal behavior is sufficient to retain large amounts of cultural knowledge in social learning populations, over long periods. A high level of copying increases the retention of cultural knowledge by several orders of magnitude.
”
”
Kevin N. Laland (Darwin's Unfinished Symphony: How Culture Made the Human Mind)
“
Now, although hypertension is accentuated by modern civilisation, it is not specifically a disease of civilisation. It is a disease of consciousness—that is, of being human. The farm labourer going to work is as likely to ignore his surroundings as the harassed car salesman. And if the inhabitants of some Amazon village are ‘closer to nature’ than New Yorkers, this is usually at the cost of dirt and ignorance and inconvenience. Hypertension is the price we pay for the symphonies of Beethoven, the novels of Balzac, the advances in medical knowledge that prevent children dying of smallpox. However, it is not a necessary and inescapable price. It is the result of ignorance, of bad management of our vital economy. The point to observe here is that although hypertension may not be necessary, it is as widespread as the common cold. It would not be inaccurate to say that all human beings live in a state of ‘vigilance’ and anxiety that is far above the level they actually need for vital efficiency. It is a general tendency of consciousness to ‘spread the attention too thinly’; and, like an over-excited child with too many toys on Christmas Day, the result is nervous exhaustion.
”
”
Colin Wilson (The Occult)
“
In 1997 an IBM computer called Deep Blue defeated the world chess champion Garry Kasparov, and unlike its predecessors, it did not just evaluate trillions of moves by brute force but was fitted with strategies that intelligently responded to patterns in the game. [Y]ou might still object that chess is an artificial world with discrete moves and a clear winner, perfectly suited to the rule-crunching of a computer. People, on the other hand, live in a messy world offering unlimited moves and nebulous goals. Surely this requires human creativity and intuition — which is why everyone knows that computers will never compose a symphony, write a story, or paint a picture. But everyone may be wrong. Recent artificial intelligence systems have written credible short stories, composed convincing Mozart-like symphonies, drawn appealing pictures of people and landscapes, and conceived clever ideas for advertisements. None of this is to say that the brain works like a digital computer, that artificial intelligence will ever duplicate the human mind, or that computers are conscious in the sense of having first-person subjective experience. But it does suggest that reasoning, intelligence, imagination, and creativity are forms of information processing, a well-understood physical process. Cognitive science, with the help of the computational theory of mind, has exorcised at least one ghost from the machine.
”
”
Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature)
“
Dr. Sherman VanMeter has made a career of unpacking the densest areas of scientific endeavor in accessible—if not polite—terms. You’ve written books on everything from astrophysics to zoology. How are you able to achieve expertise in so many disparate fields? There’s a perception that scientific disciplines are separate countries, when in fact science is a universal passport. It’s about exploring and thinking critically, not memorization. A question mark, not a period. Can you give me an example? Sure. Kids learn about the solar system by memorizing the names of planets. That’s a period. It’s also scientifically useless, because names have no value. The question mark would be to say instead, “There are hundreds of thousands of sizable bodies orbiting the sun. Which ones are exceptional? What makes them so? Are there similarities? What do they reveal?” But how do you teach a child to grasp that complexity? You teach them to grasp the style of thinking. There are no answers, only questions that shape your understanding, and which in turn reveal more questions. Sounds more like mysticism than science. How do you draw the line? That’s where the critical thinking comes in. I can see how that applies to the categorization of solar objects. But what about more abstract questions? It works there too. Take love, for example. Artists would tell you that love is a mysterious force. Priests claim it’s a manifestation of the divine. Biochemists, on the other hand, will tell you that love is a feedback loop of dopamine, testosterone, phenylethylamine, norepinephrine, and feel-my-pee-pee. The difference is, we can show our work. So you’re not a romantic, then? We’re who we are as a species because of evolution. And at the essence, evolution is the steady production of increasingly efficient killing machines. Isn’t it more accurate to say “surviving machines”? The two go hand in hand. But the killing is the prime mover; without that, the surviving doesn’t come into play. Kind of a cold way to look at the world, isn’t it? No, it’s actually an optimistic one. There’s a quote I love from the anthropologist Robert Ardrey: “We were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments? Or our treaties whatever they may be worth; our symphonies however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted to battlefields; our dreams however rarely they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen.” You used that as the epigraph to your new book, God Is an Abnorm. But I noticed you left out the last line, “We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses.” Why? That’s where Ardrey’s poetic license gets the better of his science, which is a perilous mistake. We aren’t “known among the stars” at all. The sun isn’t pondering human nature, the galaxy isn’t sitting in judgment. The universe doesn’t care about us. We’ve evolved into what we are because humanity’s current model survived and previous iterations didn’t. Simple as that. Why is a little artistic enthusiasm a perilous mistake? Because artists are more dangerous than murderers. The most prolific serial killer might have dozens of victims, but poets can lay low entire generations.
”
”
Marcus Sakey (Written in Fire (Brilliance Saga, #3))
“
Anything of a serious nature isn’t “instant”—you can’t “do” the Sistine Chapel in one hour. And who has time to listen to a Mahler symphony, for God’s sake?
”
”
Jonathan Cott (Dinner with Lenny: The Last Long Interview with Leonard Bernstein)
“
Shostakovich hated the way propaganda amplified his life and sought to make it heroic. It galled him. He was naturally shy. Fame was deadly in Stalin’s Russia. It marked you out for destruction.
”
”
M.T. Anderson (Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad)
“
One could not employ a purposeful stride with Beatrix. She stopped frequently to look at spiderwebs, insects, moss, nests. She listened to out-of-doors sounds with the same appreciation that other people showed while listening to Mozart. It was all a symphony to her... sky, water, land. She approached the world anew each day, living fully in the present, keeping pace with everything around her.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Love in the Afternoon (The Hathaways, #5))
“
There are subtle nuances and nutritive interactions that create disease resistance from the synergy of diverse substances in natural foods. Like a symphony orchestra whose members play in perfect harmony, our body depends on the harmonious interaction of nutrients, both known and unknown. By supplying a rich assortment of natural foods, we best maximize the function of the human masterpiece.
”
”
Joel Fuhrman (Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss)
“
None of these systems, whether “natural” or man-made, can operate without a continuous supply of energy and resources that have to be transformed into something “useful.” Appropriating the concept from biology, I shall refer to all such processes of energy transformation as metabolism. Depending on the sophistication of the system, these outputs of useful energy are allocated between doing physical work and fueling maintenance, growth, and reproduction. As social human beings and in marked contrast to all other creatures, the major portion of our metabolic energy has been devoted to forming communities and institutions such as cities, villages, companies, and collectives, to the manufacture of an extraordinary array of artifacts, and to the creation of an astonishing litany of ideas ranging from airplanes, cell phones, and cathedrals to symphonies, mathematics, and literature, and much, much more. However, it’s not often appreciated that without a continuous supply of energy and resources, not only can there be no manufacturing of any of these things but, perhaps more important, there can be no ideas, no innovation, no growth, and no evolution. Energy is primary. It underlies everything that we do and everything that happens around us. As such, its role in all of the questions addressed will be another continuous thread that runs throughout the book. This may seem self-evident, but it is surprising how small a role, if any, the generalized concept of energy plays in the conceptual thinking of economists and social scientists.
”
”
Geoffrey West (Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies)
“
Sounds Is Love of All, the World
Sounds create soulful existence,
When the oceans tide, it is sound;
When fervency of love creates sympathy of sobbing, sighing, jubilating, and tears drops, it’s a hymn of sound and presence.
When rains, it creates symphonies that therapeutic the body and mind, it is sound.
There is sound.
When sharing a glass of wine while looking at your significant other swallow its taste,
There is sound.
When night becomes morning, noise of the birds tweak, the dogs bark, pancakes sizzling on the pan, bees gathering for honey, it is sound.
There is sound.
When listening to music for a moodily Spirit, moving rhythmically to the music, it is sound.
When coitus makes quakes, it is sound.
In durations of lovemaking; the breathing, the objects banging, the thrusting, and the instrumental tones from the mouth, the kisses, the clapping and rubbing of flesh, it all surrounds the atmosphere, it is sound.
There is sound.
When love cuddles in your significant other sleeps, and hear breathing, heart beats, maneuvering, it is sound.
There is sound.
During intensity of love at its silence and loudest, there is sound.
As penetration of love goes deep and pulls out a sound of intensity opens and reactions follow, it is sound.
There is sound.
Beauty is the penetrating sound of the verses, the Psalms, the Proverbs, the Song of Solomon, the Gospels, and overall the Holy Scriptures spoken from a fervent tongue, power of thought, and sensible recovery from what aches, in all its sound.
Sound surrounds all ways.
It is sound.
Sound is therapy to the love and Spirit, a sound mind, in all, the world is sound.
”
”
John Shelton Jones (Awakening Kings and Princes Volume I)
“
There is a tender breeze
Wafting around here
Feel it from your Soul
You will see Magic over here
Did I just now hear a beautiful symphony over here ?
Or is it just your soothing words murmuring in my ear?
Is it the cute mynah bird on my shoulder?
Or is it your soft head nestling that I feel so tender?
There is a tender breeze
Wafting around here
Feel it from your Soul
You will see Magic over here...
Did I just now hear the nightingale sing around here?
Or is it the breeze whispering softly to the trees near?
Is that you giggling away to glory?
Or is that just the flowers mingling with the bees and telling their story?
There is a tender breeze
Wafting around here
Feel it from your Soul
You will see Magic over here..
”
”
Avijeet Das
“
Afterward, someone associated with the orchestra asked me in a hushed voice, “Would you like to know who came in early in the Mendelssohn?” Whether it was the slightly conspiratorial nature of the question that put me off, or whether it was that such a question was in disturbing contrast with the spiritedness of the music that we had just performed, I found myself saying, “No” abruptly, and then adding, “I did it.” Not literally, of course. I didn’t actually play the violin. But in that moment, in the context of the great music we had just made, it seemed absurd to me to consider handing out blame. It could only divide us, and for what? Certainly that player would never again come in early in the Italian Symphony, nor, perhaps, from this time on, make the mistake of a premature entrance in any performance. And I myself would know to be especially careful in guiding the orchestra through those eleven steps whenever I conducted that passage again. There was absolutely no gain to blaming anyone, and a real cost in terms of the blow to our integrity as a group. Besides, I know full well that every time I step onto a podium, I take a risk that things won’t turn out exactly as I anticipate them in my ear—but then, there is no great music-making without such risk taking.
”
”
Rosamund Stone Zander (The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life)
“
Feel the rustle of the leaves. Experience the rumble of the clouds. The flowers sing their own songs. The bees create their own rhythms. The waves serenade with distinct notes. The breeze captivates in its own chords. And the moon mesmerizes in her own melodies. You must understand the symphony of nature.
”
”
Avijeet Das
“
Autumn magic builds on an undercurrent of thankfulness and sorrow, a symphony of contrasting emotions that's easy to get lost in" -Clara, The Nature of Witches
”
”
Rachel Griffin
“
A deluge of rain cascaded from the heavens as Jake and Veronica Palmer gathered under the somber canopy with family and friends. The torrential downpour echoed the vastness
of their grief. Each raindrop drummed upon the earth, a melancholic symphony of sorrow, mingling with their tears and blending with the atmosphere of mourning. The heavy rain soaked their clothing, drenching them in a shared vulnerability, as nature itself wept alongside them, recognizing the profound loss that had befallen their hearts.
”
”
Geraldine Solon (The Symphony of Souls)
“
...after a time, one finds that the heart is simply not meant to pound all the time. The world couldn't go on. Regular rhythms are best. Look at nature.
”
”
Jude Morgan (Symphony)
“
No one taught me how to analyse a book, how to read from a safe distance, how not to lose sight of context, how to grasp the things left unsaid. No one taught me about schools of thought or even the ideologies meant to give depth to a mundane story. No one taught me aesthetics, language... All these, I discovered in high school while studying the classics, and broadened this knowledge at the Higher Teachers' Training College in Yaounde, from which I graduated as a French teacher. But I had already developed a habit. All my life, I would read the same way l had started off—intensely, passionately, instinctively—and sentence fragments would stick with me […] Books soothed my soul, made me angry, made me strong. They made me laugh and cry. They pushed me to examine existence with my own mind, to trust my intuition, to stretch my mind to perceive—against the backdrop of characters, nature, and plot—the intricate symphony of time that beams our being to the world.
As a child, reading made me feel less lonely, less insignificant, less vulnerable. As an adult, I developed enough discernment to understand that, while reading had not made me a better person, it had made me more levelheaded towards my own motivations, and freer.
”
”
Hemley Boum (Days Come and Go)
“
Butterfly and bee,
amidst blossoms, dance with glee.
In nature's symphony.
Butterfly's flutter,
Bee sips from a blossom's heart,
Nature's silent tale.
Petals cradle dreams,
Bee hums, weaving life's stories,
Harmony unveiled.
Delicate wings touch,
Nature whispers resilience,
A nuanced ballet.
In the dance of blooms,
A symphony of co-existence,
Lessons quietly shared.
”
”
Monika Ajay Kaul
“
Being with Nate was the most natural relationship I’d ever been in.
”
”
Kate Stewart (Drive (The Bittersweet Symphony Duet #1))
“
The planetary crisis we find ourselves in is a result of this system. The natural human instinct for survival, enabled by our technological gifts, has caused the greatest mass extinction of other species since the Cretaceous period and brought our own endangerment into the realm of the plausible. To really alter our path, we need to confront the design flaws of the Neolithic Revolution, evidenced by our addiction to growth and the accumulation of more surplus than we need. That’s not to suggest some twenty-first-century nomadology. Even the most imaginative science fiction writers would find it challenging to envision a human society that had developed without agriculture, without the bureaucratic systems it engendered to count the accumulated wealth—the original reason we developed mathematics and written language. But we know that the tiny bands of humans who managed to survive into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries outside that system were—and in a few cases, are—happier than us, even if they do not get to read novels, hear symphonies, or binge-watch a season of a television series after dinner. Walking in the edgelands of the twenty-first-century city, finding the wild nature they harbor, you can get glimpses of your own true nature as a creature that lives in and from the world, and maybe even a way to be a nomad without leaving your house. Finding such places is easier than you think. Finding your personal connection is harder.
”
”
Christopher Brown (A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places)
“
Schopenhauer, in his splendid essay called "On an Apparent Intention in the Fate of the Individual," points out that when you reach an advanced age and look back over your lifetime, it can seem to have had a consistent orderand plan, as though composed by some novelist. Events that when they occurred had seemed accidental and of little moment turn out to have been indispensable factors in the composition of a consistent plot. So who composed that plot? Schopenhauer suggests that just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself of which your consciousness is unaware, so, too, your whole life is composed by the will within you. And just as people whom you will have met apparently by mere chance became leading agents in the structuring of your life, so, too, will you have served unknowingly as an agent, giving meaning to the lives of others. The whole thing gears together like one big symphony, with everything unconsciously structuring everything else. And Schopenhauer concludes that it is as though our lives were the features of the one great dream of a single dreamer in which all the dream characters dream, too; so that everything links to everything else, moved by the one will to life which is the universal will in nature.
”
”
Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (1988) Paperback)
“
We can make all this a good deal more comfortable by adopting a simple strategem. We can recognize that all along in the book we have really been talking about a class of systems: a class I will call purposed systems. This is the class of all means to purposes, whether physically or non-physically based. Some means-radar, the laser, MRI-we can prefer to think of as technologies in the traditional sense. Others-symphonies and organizations-we can prefer to think of as purposed systems, more like first cousins to technology, even if formally they qualify as technologies. That way we can talk about narrower physical technologies for most of our discussion, but we can also extend to the non-physical purposed-system ones when we want.
All this seems to be a digression. But it does establish the scope of what we are talking about. We can admit musical structures, money, legal codes, institutions, and organizations-indeed all means or purposed systems- to the argument even if they do not depend upon physical effects. With suitable changes, the logic I am laying out also applies to them.
”
”
W. Brian Arthur (The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves)
“
A Mahler symphony is normally just an aesthetic experience, and a software company is normally just an organization. But we should remember that these too are "technologies" if we choose to see them this way. Mahler is very deliberately "programming" phenomena in our brains. To be specific he is arranging to set up responses in our cochlear nuclei, brain stems, cerebellums, and auditory cortices. At least in this sense Mahler is an engineer.
”
”
W. Brian Arthur (The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves)
“
I trust in the slow and natural process of learning to love and be loved by another person. I'd be lying if I said [my healthy relationship] was as exciting as the unhealthy relationships I'd had in the past. It wasn't. But I'd lost the taste for drama. The backside of Hollywood passion is disappointment and loneliness-- and more often than not, resentment and cynicism about the nature of love itself. My healthy relationship was more of a symphony than a pop song. Don't get me wrong. Love is wonderful and our season of getting to know each other was the harvest of a long season of farming. But true intimacy is just like that: it's the food you grow from well-tilled ground. And like most things good for us, it's an acquired taste.
”
”
Donald Miller (Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy)
“
Winston Churchill said that the natural state of the human experience is that of battle. From the moment we’re conceived, we battle to survive and thrive. The key, I think, is to learn how to battle better and enjoy the good times as well as the challenging times. Just like a symphony, life has its high and low notes. We don’t go to the symphony to enjoy just the high happy parts of the performance. We sit and embrace the low and sad parts as well. This is what makes up the symphony, and this is what makes up life.
”
”
Jay A. Block (101 Best Ways to Land a Job in Troubled Times)
“
It had been years since Melora listened to a symphony. She had been struck by how natural and organic the music was. She found herself thinking about how the instruments were all human powered—not one electrical impulse among them. Maybe that was why it was so easy to get transported by the music—to find oneself thinking about vast outdoor landscapes when the music played.
”
”
Marie Zhuikov (Plover Landing)
“
We all face a fundamental choice in our lives. Do we take the path prescribed by our “now you’re supposed to” society, or do we take our own path to toward the life we feel we ought to be living? Do we choose our life’s work based on the U.S. Department of Labor’s list of highest-paying jobs, or do we follow our bliss? Do we heed the call to conformity, or the call to adventure? Every day we see how people have answered these questions, whether consciously or otherwise. We’re constantly confronted with the lazy, the apathetic, the immoral, the indifferent, the irresponsible, and the disconnected—the signs of a decaying culture. “What does it all mean?” many wonder while chasing purposes they’re told are worthwhile, but which feel empty. “What is the purpose of this life?” humans have wondered for millennia, contemplating how insignificant we are in the great cosmic symphony. Well, as the preeminent mythologist Joseph Campbell said, deep down inside, we don’t seek the meaning of life, but the experience of being alive. And that’s what the nature of genius is ultimately about.
”
”
Sean Patrick (Nikola Tesla: Imagination and the Man That Invented the 20th Century)
“
heartful. PR: You really did it. Music is an amazing art, to me. I love to recount to myself the number of human beings it takes, each skilled in a different area, to make possible a symphony concert. The composers, and those who copied and preserved the compositions, the instrument makers, skilled at their crafts—tubas, trumpets, timpani, woodwinds, strings—the music teachers who taught the performers, the performers who studied their instruments and practiced and rehearsed, all the builders who erected the concert hall—carpenters, electricians, etc.—the architect who designed it, the conductor who studied, who learned the language of music, the languages of all the instruments, the members of the audience who bought tickets, got dressed, came to the concert hall to be transported, to be informed, by sound, came for an experience that had nothing to do with physical survival. Most amazing. Always makes me certain absolutely without doubt that something is going on with the human species, something good. Two heroes to me are my middle school music teacher and my son’s middle school music teacher. What courage! All those twelve- and thirteen-year-old children, each with a noise-making instrument in his hands and these two enormously courageous teachers are attempting to teach them how to make music together. At my son’s first sixthgrade band concert, the music teacher turned to the audience of glowing, proud parents and said, “I’m not certain what’s going to happen here, but I’m just hoping that we’ll all begin at the same time.” It brought tears to my eyes, literally. And they did it! One step forward, in my opinion, in understanding what it means to be human.
”
”
Pattiann Rogers (The Grand Array: Writings on Nature, Science, and Spirit)
“
The world had gone quiet, and all that was left was an empty, dead space where nature's symphony should have been playing.
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John (ronin) Evans (Midnight Falls)
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Tax your soul with the majestic beauty of Mount Bromo, where the earth kisses the sky and nature's symphony plays a melody of awe-inspiring wonder
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Bayu Triaswara
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We need to be creating a symphony with nature, not just living in harmony.
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wizanda
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The vagus nerve is the conductor of the human body symphony orchestra.
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Navaz Habib (Activate Your Vagus Nerve: Unleash Your Body’s Natural Ability to Overcome Gut Sensitivities, Inflammation, Autoimmunity, Brain Fog, Anxiety and Depression)
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awareness of the divine, in large measure because of the intricate detail and difference of all creatures. He saw through a spiritual lens; while Darwin sought evidence of evolution and change, Gerard noted documentation of specialness, sameness, absolute identity in inscape and its effect on him: his response, generated by the inscape of the thing, he called “instress.” The term was almost musical, like a downbeat or rhythm or rest; the various and multifaceted forms of natural life clustered like notes on a ruled page of musical composition. He saw it, and he heard it. It was for him a great symphony composed of particularities, and so would his poetry become. For now, there were hints and foreshadowings in his prose.
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Catharine Randall (A Heart Lost in Wonder: The Life and Faith of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Library of Religious Biography (LRB)))
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With its restricted access and limitless possibilities, I believe the brain is the window to the universe. It is in our hands to keep it open for love to reach. When it reaches, you wouldn’t know it, but feel it. And when it touches, you wouldn’t feel it, but know you belong to it.
Mark my words with your eyelids. This is the only time when the sensible and smart brain will falter. It feels a lot like gravity when we fall in love. Natural. Out of the body and brain. It feels out of the universe that we know, like the infinite unknown. It is not manmade.
Love doesn’t make sense. It is the universe’s calling to express that we are all one endless song sung in different notes of a dream. Can you hear the symphony of the souls connected? It moves to make us stand still.
Love stirs. Love moves. Love is.
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Maverick Prem (When Souls Make Love)
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Find inner peace of your own song in nature, away from the cacophony of the city; where we've become an integrated part, in an out of tune symphony.
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wizanda
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BROADCASTING RESONANCE Anchored in nonlocal consciousness, your local life begins to change. As you resonate with the cycles of nature, as your heart’s coherence conditions the energy space around you, as you vibrate to the signal of love and joy in your consciousness, you attract people and conditions that match your states and traits. Without effort, as your magnificent new signal broadcasts out around you, resonating with the music of the universe, you’ll come into synchrony with people and events that bless and delight you. You’ll discover that you’re not alone. As you tune to the great symphony of life each day, you’ll find that you’re tuned to millions of other people who are likewise attuned. With no effort at all, you’ll discover wonderful new friends and companions wherever you travel. As the light shines from your eyes, it meets the light in the eyes of others. When you’re awake, you naturally enjoy others who are awake. 9.3. Coming into synchrony. LOVING THE SLEEPER Not everyone is awake, and that’s fine. Sometimes your friends and family members are tossing in their sleep, suffering unnecessarily. Their plight touches you. You feel their misery. You would love to see them wake up, and shed those beliefs, thoughts, and habits that drag them down. You can’t force them to do so, no matter how much you love them. Everyone makes their own choice. What you can do for people who are suffering is shine brightly yourself. If they’re ready, they’ll wake up. If they don’t, trust the universe. We each wake up when the time is right. Their time might come later; it’s not up to you. You can share this book and other resources with them. You can share your story as I have shared mine, and perhaps these examples will inspire them. If and when each of us wakes up is our choice. UNLOCKING YOUR POTENTIAL As you live in synchrony with the universe, enjoying the community of other Bliss Brainers, you find new possibilities opening up. You start to unlock potential that’s been trapped inside the suffering, selfing self. Increasingly, you’re not just in Bliss Brain during meditation. You’re in the Awakened Mind state with your eyes open, going about your day. All kinds of possibilities that were previously unavailable to you now become available.
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Dawson Church (Bliss Brain: The Neuroscience of Remodeling Your Brain for Resilience, Creativity, and Joy)
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Butterfly alights,
whispers to the firefly,
"Night's canvas awaits."
Firefly twinkles,
responds with soft luminescence,
"We'll paint it with light."
Butterfly flutters,
"Your glow guides through the shadows,
our nocturnal flight."
Firefly replies,
"In the darkness, we unite,
Nature's lanterns bright."
Together they dance,
wings and sparks raveling.
A symphony of night.
”
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Monika Ajay Kaul
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When ego, unopposed, assumes its throne,
The world, in fragments, reaps the seeds it’s sown.
A kaleidoscope of discord and divide,
Where separate streams in ceaseless turmoil bide.
Through ego’s lens, reality transforms,
A battleground where rampant desire storms.
A sphere of strife, of victory and loss,
Where fortunes shift as dice of fate are tossed.
In ego’s solitary, narrow view,
The world is painted in a hue so skewed.
Confined by fears, by selfish dreams confined,
Its canvas bears the limits of the mind.
Thus, perception, in its manifold grace,
Reflects the light of ego and soul’s face.
In balance, may the truest sight be found,
Where essence and ego in harmony abound.
In the crucible where essence blends with sight,
A wondrous transformation takes its flight.
Where once division’s shadow coldly lay,
Interconnection’s dawn breaks forth in day.
What opposition’s harsh gaze once discerned,
To harmonies of concord is now turned.
The essence, with its ancient wisdom’s glow,
Unveils the unity that lies below.
Each leaf and stone, each soul that wanders free,
A note within reality’s grand symphony.
Essential, bound within the vast expanse,
In life’s intricate, cosmic dance.
This alchemical shift in vision’s sphere,
Brings forth changes profound, both far and near.
Challenges, once daunting, now unfold,
As growth’s opportunities, bright and bold.
Foes, once clad in enmity’s harsh guise,
Transform to teachers, wise beneath the skies.
Each joy, each pain, in life’s intricate weave,
Threads of our evolution, we perceive.
No longer a stage for vain rivalry’s play,
But a landscape where learning’s blossoms sway.
Growth and learning, in rich abundance, thrive,
In this new world where our spirits come alive.
Where once the ego’s voice, in solo strain,
Ruled with iron will, in self’s domain,
Now in harmony with the soul’s sweet song,
It finds a place where it truly belongs.
No longer master, but a partner kind,
Guiding through life with a humble mind.
It learns compassion’s tongue, intuition hears,
Acts with mindfulness, as purpose nears.
In perception’s alchemy, a journey grand,
From fractured states to unity’s soft hand,
From discord’s harsh cacophony to peace,
A path that leads where true essences release.
This sacred path, evolving as it weaves,
Into our nature’s heart, where spirit cleaves.
The veil of separation gently falls,
As interconnectedness softly calls.
Upon this path, with every step we tread,
Our world transforms, new visions in its stead.
The mundane now with sacredness imbues,
The ordinary in extraordinary hues.
Each day becomes a picture, rich and vast,
For deepest truths, in vibrant colors cast.
Through alchemy of sight, our roles transcend,
Not mere observers, but creators bend.
In world’s unfolding tale, we play our part,
Co-architects, with collective heart.
A reality, where highest potentials shine,
In this, your design, our spirits intertwine.
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Kevin L. Michel (The 7 Laws of Quantum Power)
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This responsive attitude to the value of being is pervaded by the disposition to recognize something superior to one’s arbitrary pleasure and will, and to be ready to subordinate and abandon oneself. It enables the spiritual eye to see the deeper nature of every being. It leaves to being the possibility of unveiling its essence, and makes a man capable of grasping values. To whom will the sublime beauty of a sunset or a Ninth Symphony of Beethoven reveal itself, but to him who approaches it reverently and unlocks his heart to it? To whom will the mystery that lies in life and manifests itself in every plant reveal itself in its full splendor, but to him who contemplates it reverently? But he who sees in it only a means of subsistence or of earning money, that is, something that can be used or employed, will not discover the meaning, structure, and significance of the world in its beauty and hidden dignity.
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Dietrich von Hildebrand (The Art of Living)
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Pregnancy Skincare: Nurturing Your Glow with Expert Care – Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital
Pregnancy – a wondrous journey that transforms your world in every conceivable way. As you
prepare to welcome a new life into the world, your body takes center stage, and so does your
skincare routine. Amidst the excitement and anticipation, the canvas of your skin undergoes its own
set of changes. But fret not, for the guidance of best gynecologist obstetricians in Chandigarh and
the expert care at Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital can help you navigate the realm of pregnancy
skincare with grace and confidence.
The Glow and the Challenges
Ah, the famed pregnancy glow! While it’s true that many expectant mothers experience a certain
radiance, it’s also a time when your skin decides to throw a few curveballs. Hormones like estrogen
and progesterone, the maestros behind many pregnancy changes, might lead to increased oil
production. This could result in unexpected acne or that elusive “glow” turning into a somewhat
excessive shine.
And let’s not forget about the infamous melasma, often referred to as the “mask of pregnancy.” This
uneven pigmentation might make an appearance on your face, especially if you’re basking in the
sun’s rays without proper protection. But worry not, for the guidance of the best gynaecologist in
Chandigarh, you can take steps to manage these challenges and let your true radiance shine
through.
Dos and Don’ts
In this symphony of pregnancy skincare, it’s crucial to compose a harmonious routine that nurtures
both your skin and the life growing within you. First and foremost, let’s talk hydration. Drinking
water is like giving your skin a refreshing dose of vitality, ensuring that it remains supple and
resilient.
As you venture into the world of skincare products, remember that less is more. Opt for gentle,
pregnancy-safe cleansers that cleanse without stripping away your skin’s natural moisture.
Ingredients like hyaluronic acid and glycerin can be your skin’s best friends, offering hydration
without clogging pores.
Ah, the allure of sunscreen! Now more than ever, shielding your skin from the sun’s rays is of
paramount importance. Look for a broad-spectrum SPF and ensure that it’s pregnancy-safe. A hat
and sunglasses can also join the ensemble of sun protection.
Now, as you scan the beauty aisles, you might come across a wide array of products promising
miracles. But be cautious – not all ingredients are pregnancy-friendly. Best gynecologist in Sector44C would advise steering clear of retinoids, salicylic acid, and benzoyl peroxide. Instead, embrace
the calming embrace of ingredients like chamomile and aloe vera.
Treating Yourself with Care
Amidst the whirlwind of preparations, don’t forget to treat yourself to moments of self-care. A
gentle exfoliation once or twice a week can help slough away dead skin cells and keep your
complexion radiant. Opt for exfoliants with natural granules to ensure that your skin is treated with
the gentleness it deserves.
Expert Support for Your Glow
The journey of pregnancy is as unique as a fingerprint, and so is your skin’s response to it. That’s why
seeking guidance from the best obstetricians in Chandigarh can make all the difference.
As you navigate the realms of pregnancy skincare, remember that the changes your skin undergoes
are a testament to the incredible journey you’re on. It’s a journey of growth, transformation, and the
anticipation of new beginnings. With the guidance of experts, a touch of self-care, and the support
of Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital, you can stride through this journey with confidence, letting your
inner glow shine as brightly as your dreams.
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Dr. Poonam Kumar
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But now I wanted nothing more than to be the girl so free that fireflies shined as her night-lights, cicadas sang her symphonies, and the forest stood as her cathedral.
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Meagan Church (The Last Carolina Girl)
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Amidst the urgency of our time, let the seeds of change take root. For in the quiet strength of a single tree, lies the profound capacity to heal our wounded planet. With each sapling we plant, we sow the promise of a brighter future, where harmony thrives, and nature's symphony dances once more. Embrace the urgent necessity to plant trees, for their verdant embrace is the breath of life we desperately seek.
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R.A. Sterling (Reforesting Hope: Planting Trees to Heal the Earth)