Quotes on the subject of HOPE

Hope is grief’s best music.  ~Author Unknown

There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.  ~Baruch Spinoza

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.  ~Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack

When you say a situation or a person is hopeless, you’re slamming the door in the face of God.  ~Charles L. Allen

Hope never abandons you, you abandon it.  ~George Weinberg

Some see a hopeless end, while others see an endless hope.  ~Author Unknown

Hope is patience with the lamp lit.  ~Tertullian

Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.  ~Lin Yutang

Hope is the poor man’s bread.  ~Gary Herbert

Hope is the word which God has written on the brow of every man.  ~Victor Hugo

Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.  ~Robert Ingersoll

Hope, deceitful as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.  ~François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

Once you choose hope, anything’s possible.  ~Christopher Reeve

Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.  ~Robert G. Ingersoll

Things which you do not hope happen more frequently than things which you do hope.  ~Titus Maccius Plautus

Hope is some extraordinary spiritual grace that God gives us to control our fears, not to oust them.  ~Vincent McNabb

In reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man’s torments.  ~Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 1878

When the world says, “Give up,”
Hope whispers, “Try it one more time.”
~Author Unknown

Love floods us with hope.  ~Jareb Teague

There is nothing so well known as that we should not expect something for nothing - but we all do and call it Hope.  ~Edgar Howe

Hope itself is a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords; but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain.  ~Samuel Johnson
Hope is that thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops… at all.  ~Emily Dickinson

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come.  ~Anne Lamott

The miserable have no other medicine
But only hope.
~William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination.  ~Marian Zimmer Bradley

You’ve gotta have hope.  Without hope life is meaningless.  Without hope life is meaning less and less.  ~Author Unknown

Hope is the feeling we have that the feeling we have is not permanent.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960

Lord save us all from… a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.  ~Mark Twain

Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark.  ~George Iles

When hope is hungry, everything feeds it.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960

Hope is putting faith to work when doubting would be easier.  ~Author Unknown

If one truly has lost hope, one would not be on hand to say so.  ~Eric Bentley

The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes.  ~Thomas Hardy

Hope is independent of the apparatus of logic.  ~Norman Cousins

Sanity may be madness but the maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be.  ~Don Quixote

It’s all one thing - both tend into one scope -
To live upon Tobacco and on Hope,
The one’s but smoke, the other is but wind.
~Sir Robert Aytoun of Kincaldie, “Sonnet on Tobacco”

Hope is necessary in every condition.  The miseries of poverty, sickness, of captivity, would, without this comfort, be insupportable.  ~Samuel Johnson

Hope is the physician of each misery.  ~Irish Proverb

Hope deceives more men than cunning does.  ~Vauvenargues, Reflections and Maxims, 1746

Take hope from the heart of man and you make him a beast of prey.  ~Ouida

It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.  ~Eric Hoffer

To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death.  ~Pearl S. Buck

Hope is but the dream of those who wake.  ~Matthew Prior

Judith Crist
Happiness is too many things these days for anyone to wish it on anyone lightly. So let’s just wish each other a bile-less New Year and leave it at that.

Anonymous
Many people look forward to the New Year for a new start on old habits.

Joey Adams
May all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions!

Anais Nin
I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me.

Oscar Wilde
Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.

May all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions. - Joey Adams,

New Year Resolutions
1. To refrain from saying witty, unkind things, unless they are really witty and irreparably damaging.
2. To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time. - James Agate,

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards. Unless a man be born again, he shall by no means enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. - G.K. Chesterton,

There is no moment like the present. The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hope from them afterwards: they will be dissipated, lost, and perish in the hurry and scurry of the world, or sunk in the slough of indolence. - Maria Edgeworth,

Every new year people make resolutions to change aspects of themselves they believe are negative. The majority of people revert back to how they were before and feel like failures. This year I challenge you to a new resolution. I challenge you to just be yourself. - Aisha

He who breaks a resolution is a weakling;
He who makes one is a fool. - F.M. Knowles, A Cheerful Year Book

I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me. - Anais Nin,

Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. - Mark Twain,

Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account. - Oscar Wilde,

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• A sense of the miraculous in everyday life

Dog Quotes

“First you learn a new language, profanity; and second you learn not to discipline your dogs when you’re mad, and that’s most of the time when you’re training dogs.” - Lou Schultz, trainer of Alaskan Huskies

“He’s fair. He treats us all the same-like dogs.” - Henry Jordan, Green Bay Packers right tackle On Vince Lombardi, recalled on Lombardi’s death 3 Sep 70

“Watching baseball under the lights is like observing dogs indoors, at a pedigree show. In both instances, the environment is too controlled to suit the species.” - Melvin Maddocks, “Baseball-The Difference between Night and Day” Christian Science Monitor 3 Apr 85

There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.  ~Ben Williams
The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.  ~Samuel Butler, Notebooks, 1912

From the dog’s point of view, his master is an elongated and abnormally cunning dog.  ~Mabel Louise Robinson

Dogs are miracles with paws.  ~Attributed to Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy

Man is a dog’s idea of what God should be.  ~Holbrook Jackson

The dog is the only animal that has seen his god.  ~Author Unknown

Dogs’ lives are too short.  Their only fault, really.  ~Agnes Sligh Turnbull

My little dog - a heartbeat at my feet.  ~Edith Wharton

We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults.  Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.  ~George Eliot

I think dogs are the most amazing creatures; they give unconditional love.  For me they are the role model for being alive.  ~Gilda Radner

I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the uninhibited creatures we might be if we weren’t certain we knew better.  They fight for honor at the first challenge, make love with no moral restraint, and they do not for all their marvelous instincts appear to know about death. 

Being such wonderfully uncomplicated beings, they need us to do their worrying.  ~George Bird Evans, Troubles with Bird Dogs

Our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage.  ~Agnes Repplier

One reason a dog can be such a comfort when you’re feeling blue is that he doesn’t try to find out why.  ~Author Unknown

Scratch a dog and you’ll find a permanent job.  ~Franklin P. Jones

I talk to him when I’m lonesome like; and I’m sure he understands.  When he looks at me so attentively, and gently licks my hands; then he rubs his nose on my tailored clothes, but I never say naught thereat.  For the good Lord knows I can buy more clothes, but never a friend like that.  ~W. Dayton Wedgefarth

When a dog barks at the moon, then it is religion; but when he barks at strangers, it is patriotism!  ~David Starr Jordan

Properly trained, a man can be dog’s best friend.  ~Corey Ford

If you think dogs can’t count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then giving Fido only two of them.  ~Phil Pastoret

With the exception of women, there is nothing on earth so agreeable or necessary to the comfort of man as the dog.  ~Edward Jesse, Anecdote of Dogs

The dog is a yes-animal, very popular with people who can’t afford to keep a yes-man.  ~Robertson Davies

Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails.  ~Max Eastman, Enjoyment of Laughter

My goal in life is to be as good of a person my dog already thinks I am.  ~Author Unknown

If dogs could talk, it would take a lot of the fun out of owning one.  ~Andy Rooney

A dog is not “almost human” and I know of no greater insult to the canine race than to describe it as such.  ~John Holmes

If you get to thinking you’re a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else’s dog around.  ~Will Rogers

The more I see of man, the more I like dogs.  ~Mme. de Staël

Did you ever notice when you blow in a dog’s face he gets mad at you?  But when you take him in a car he sticks his head out the window.  ~Steve Bluestone

To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.  ~Aldous Huxley

They never talk about themselves but listen to you while you talk about yourself, and keep up an appearance of being interested in the conversation.  ~Jerome K. Jerome

Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in?  I think that is how dogs spend their lives.  ~Sue Murphy

Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.  ~Roger Caras

The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven, not man’s.  ~Mark Twain, letter to W.D. Howells, 2 April 1899

The most affectionate creature in the world is a wet dog.  ~Ambrose Bierce

   
 
A dog is one of the remaining reasons why some people can be persuaded to go for a walk.  ~O.A. Battista

In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn’t merely try to train him to be semi human.  The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.  ~Edward Hoagland

If dogs could talk, perhaps we would find it as hard to get along with them as we do with people.  ~Karel Capek
Near this spot are deposited the remains of one who possessed Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferocity, and all the Virtues of Man, without his Vices.  This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery if inscribed over human ashes, is but a just tribute to the Memory of Boatswain, a Dog.  ~George Gordon, Lord Byron, “Inscription on the Monument of a Newfoundland Dog”

The dog was created specially for children.  He is the god of frolic.  ~Henry Ward Beecher

The greatest love is a mother’s; then a dog’s; then a sweetheart’s.  ~Polish Proverb
A man may smile and bid you hail
Yet wish you to the devil;
But when a good dog wags his tail,
You know he’s on the level.
~Author Unknown

Dogs have given us their absolute all.  We are the center of their universe.  We are the focus of their love and faith and trust.  They serve us in return for scraps.  It is without a doubt the best deal man has ever made.  ~Roger Caras

No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.  ~Herman Melville, Redburn. His First Voyage, 1849

Anybody who doesn’t know what soap tastes like never washed a dog.  ~Franklin P. Jones

Any member introducing a dog into the Society’s premises shall be liable to a fine of one pound.  Any animal leading a blind person shall be deemed to be a cat.  ~Oxford Union Society, London, Rule 46

In the world which we know, among the different and primitive geniuses that preside over the evolution of the several species, there exists not one, excepting that of the dog, that ever gave a thought to the presence of man.  ~Maurice Maeterlinck

Happiness is a warm puppy.  ~Charles M. Schulz

No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does.  ~Christopher Morley

If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater… suggest that he wear a tail.  ~Fran Lebowitz

Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear.  ~Dave Barry

A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.  ~Ogden Nash

The reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tail instead of his tongue.  ~Author Unknown

Whoever said you can’t buy happiness forgot little puppies.  ~Gene Hill

I loathe people who keep dogs.  They are cowards who haven’t got the guts to bite people themselves.  ~Author Unknown

The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.  ~Andy Rooney

My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to 99 cents a can.  That’s almost $7.00 in dog money.  ~Joe Weinstein

I always like a dog so long as he isn’t spelled backward.  ~G.K. Chesterton

If your dog is fat, you’re not getting enough exercise.  ~Author Unknown

The dog wags his tail, not for you, but for your bread.  ~Portuguese Proverb

A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.  ~Robert Benchley

The best way to get a puppy is to beg for a baby brother - and they’ll settle for a puppy every time.  ~Winston Pendelton

Life is like a dog sled team.  If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.  ~Lewis Grizzard

You ask of my companions.  Hills, sir, and the sundown, and a dog as large as myself that my father bought me.  They are better than human beings, because they know but do not tell.  ~Emily Dickinson

There is no faith which has never yet been broken, except that of a truly faithful dog.  ~Konrad Lorenz

If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience.  ~Woodrow Wilson

Dogs, the foremost snobs in creation, are quick to notice the difference between a well-clad and a disreputable stranger.  ~Albert Payson Terhune

You think dogs will not be in heaven?  I tell you, they will be there long before any of us.  ~Robert Louis Stevenson

To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace.  ~Milan Kundera

When a man’s best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.  ~Edward Abbey

A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than you love yourself.  ~Josh Billings

I wonder what goes through his mind when he sees us peeing in his water bowl.  ~Penny Ward Moser

A dog can express more with his tail in seconds than his owner can express with his tongue in hours.  ~Author Unknown

I love a dog.  He does nothing for political reasons.  ~Will Rogers

Children are for people who can’t have dogs.  ~Author Unknown

I named my dog Stay so I can say, “Come here, Stay.  Come here, Stay.”  ~Steven Wright

When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog along to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes.  The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.  ~Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

If you can look at a dog and not feel vicarious excitement and affection, you must be a cat.  ~Author Unknown

The more one gets to know of men, the more one values dogs.  ~Alphonse Toussenel

When a dog wants to hang out the “Do Not Disturb” sign, as all of us do now and then, he is regarded as a traitor to his species.  ~Ramona C. Albert

Both humans and dogs love to play well into adulthood, and individuals from both species occasionally display evidence of having a conscience.  ~Jon Winokur

The pug is living proof that God has a sense of humor.  ~Margo Kaufman

Dachshunds are ideal dogs for small children, as they are already stretched and pulled to such a length that the child cannot do much harm one way or the other.  ~Robert Benchley

I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.  ~Rita Rudner

Fox-terriers are born with about four times as much original sin in them as other dogs.  ~Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

Labradors [are] lousy watchdogs.  They usually bark when there is a stranger about, but it is an expression of unmitigated joy at the chance to meet somebody new, not a warning.  ~Norman Strung

Newfoundland dogs are good to save children from drowning, but you must have a pond of water handy and a child, or else there will be no profit in boarding a Newfoundland.  ~Josh Billings

Bulldogs are adorable, with faces like toads that have been sat on.  ~Colette

The nose of the bulldog has been slanted backwards so that he can breathe without letting go.  ~Winston Churchill

I like a bit of mongrel myself, whether it’s a man or a dog; they’re the best for everyday.  ~George Bernard Shaw

The magi, as you know, were wise men - wonderfuly wise men who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents.
O. Henry

He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.
Roy L. Smith

God put Santa Claus on earth to remind us that Christmas is ‘sposed to be a happy time.
Bill Keane’s “Family Circus”

So if a Christian is touched only once a year, the touching is still worth it, and maybe on some given Christmas, some quiet morning, the touch will take.
Harry Reasoner

Are you willing to forget what you have done for other people, and to remember what other people have done for you … to remember the weakness and loneliness of people who are growing old … Are you willing to believe that love is the strongest thing in the world … stronger than hate, stronger than evil, stronger than death… Then you can keep Christmas! But you can never keep it alone.
Henry van Dyke

A Christmas candle is a lovely thing;
It makes no noise at all,
But softly gives itself away.
Eva Logue

Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.  ~Norman Vincent Peale

Christmas is a time when you get homesick - even when you’re home.  ~Carol Nelson

He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.  ~Roy L. Smith

Christmas, children, is not a date.  It is a state of mind.  ~Mary Ellen Chase

I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.  ~Charles Dickens

Christmas is the gentlest, loveliest festival of the revolving year - and yet, for all that, when it speaks, its voice has strong authority.  ~W.J. Cameron

The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree:  the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.  ~Burton Hillis

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home!  ~Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1836

There has been only one Christmas - the rest are anniversaries.  ~W.J. Cameron

A Christmas gambol oft could cheer
The poor man’s heart through half the year.
~Walter Scott

Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.  ~Laura Ingalls Wilder

May Peace be your gift at Christmas and your blessing all year through!  ~Author Unknown

I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.  ~Charles Dickens

Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree.  In the eyes of children, they are all 30 feet tall.  ~Larry Wilde, The Merry Book of Christmas

Christmas is the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.  ~Washington Irving

Isn’t it funny that at Christmas something in you gets so lonely for - I don’t know what exactly, but it’s something that you don’t mind so much not having at other times.  ~Kate L. Bosher

Instead of being a time of unusual behavior, Christmas is perhaps the only time in the year when people can obey their natural impulses and express their true sentiments without feeling self-conscious and, perhaps, foolish.  Christmas, in short, is about the only chance a man has to be himself.  ~Francis C. Farley

It is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air.  ~W.T. Ellis

For centuries men have kept an appointment with Christmas.  Christmas means fellowship, feasting, giving and receiving, a time of good cheer, home.  ~W.J. Ronald Tucker

Even as an adult I find it difficult to sleep on Christmas Eve.  Yuletide excitement is a potent caffeine, no matter your age.  ~Carrie Latet

Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it.  Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their kids pay for it.  ~Richard Lamm

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love!  ~Hamilton Wright Mabie

Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.  ~Author unknown, attributed to a 7-year-old named Bobby

Christmas is forever, not for just one day,
for loving, sharing, giving, are not to put away
like bells and lights and tinsel, in some box upon a shelf.
The good you do for others is good you do yourself…
~Norman Wesley Brooks, “Let Every Day Be Christmas,” 1976

From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it.  ~Katharine Whitehorn

In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it ‘Christmas’ and went to church; the Jews called it ‘Hanukkah’ and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank.  People passing each other on the street would say ‘Merry Christmas!’ or ‘Happy Hanukkah!’  or (to the atheists) ‘Look out for the wall!’  ~Dave Barry, “Christmas Shopping:  A Survivor’s Guide”

Remember
This December,
That love weighs more than gold!
~Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon

I sometimes think we expect too much of Christmas Day.  We try to crowd into it the long arrears of kindliness and humanity of the whole year.  As for me, I like to take my Christmas a little at a time, all through the year.  And thus I drift along into the holidays - let them overtake me unexpectedly - waking up some find morning and suddenly saying to myself:  “Why, this is Christmas Day!”  ~David Grayson

A Christmas candle is a lovely thing;
It makes no noise at all,
But softly gives itself away.
~Eva Logue

Christmas is not as much about opening our presents as opening our hearts.  ~Janice Maeditere

Perhaps the best Yuletide decoration is being wreathed in smiles.  ~Author Unknown

Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special!  How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer…. Who’d have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and spirituality would mix so harmoniously?  ~Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes

Only in souls the Christ is brought to birth,
And there He lives and dies.
~Alfred Noyes

When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time.  Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?  ~G.K. Chesterton

For the spirit of Christmas fulfils the greatest hunger of mankind.  ~Loring A. Schuler

I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month.  ~Harlan Miller

Once again we find ourselves enmeshed in the Holiday Season, that very special time of year when we join with our loved ones in sharing centuries-old traditions such as trying to find a parking space at the mall.  We traditionally do this in my family by driving around the parking lot until we see a shopper emerge from the mall, then we follow her, in very much the same spirit as the Three Wise Men, who 2,000 years ago followed a star, week after week, until it led them to a parking space.  ~Dave Barry

Keep your Christmas-heart open all the year round.  ~Jessica Archmint

Sing hey!  Sing hey!
For Christmas Day;
Twine mistletoe and holly.
For a friendship glows
In winter snows,
And so let’s all be jolly!
~Author Unknown

To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year.  ~E.B. White, “The Distant Music of the Hounds,” The Second Tree from the Corner, 1954

At Christmas play and make good cheer,
For Christmas comes but once a year
~Thomas Tusser

Oh, for the good old days when people would stop Christmas shopping when they ran out of money.  ~Author Unknown

Christmas is for children.  But it is for grown-ups too.  Even if it is a headache, a chore, and nightmare, it is a period of necessary defrosting of chill and hide-bound hearts.  ~Lenora Mattingly Weber

There is a remarkable breakdown of taste and intelligence at Christmastime.  Mature, responsible grown men wear neckties made of holly leaves and drink alcoholic beverages with raw egg yolks and cottage cheese in them.  ~P.J. O’Rourke

Roses are reddish
Violets are bluish
If it weren’t for Christmas
We’d all be Jewish.
~Benny Hill

Open your presents at Christmastime but be thankful year round for the gifts you receive.  ~Lorinda Ruth Lowen

I can understand people simply fleeing the mountainous effort Christmas has become… but there are always a few saving graces and finally they make up for all the bother and distress.  ~May Sarton

Fail not to call to mind, in the course of the twenty-fifth of this month, that the Divinest Heart that ever walked the earth was born on that day; and then smile and enjoy yourselves for the rest of it; for mirth is also of Heaven’s making.  ~Leigh Hunt

Great little One! whose all-embracing birth
Lifts Earth to Heaven, stoops Heaven to Earth.
~Richard Crashaw

I do like Christmas on the whole…. In its clumsy way, it does approach Peace and Goodwill.  But it is clumsier every year.  ~E.M. Forster

At Christmas
A man is at his finest towards the finish of the year;
He is almost what he should be when the Christmas season’s here;
Then he’s thinking more of others than he’s thought the months before,
And the laughter of his children is a joy worth toiling for.
He is less a selfish creature than at any other time;
When the Christmas spirit rules him he comes close to the sublime…
~Edgar Guest

Christmas is the season when you buy this year’s gifts with next year’s money.  ~Author Unknown

The Church does not superstitiously observe days, merely as days, but as memorials of important facts.  Christmas might be kept as well upon one day of the year as another; but there should be a stated day for commemorating the birth of our Saviour, because there is danger that what may be done on any day, will be neglected.  ~Samuel Johnson

The Christmas season has come to mean the period when the public plays Santa Claus to the merchants.  ~John Andrew Holmes

[I]t is the one season of the year when we can lay aside all gnawing worry, indulge in sentiment without censure, assume the carefree faith of childhood, and just plain “have fun.”  Whether they call it Yuletide, Noel, Weinachten, or Christmas, people around the earth thirst for its refreshment as the desert traveller for the oasis.  ~D.D. Monroe

May the spirit of Christmas bring you peace,
The gladness of Christmas give you hope,
The warmth of Christmas grant you love.
~Author Unknown

If “ifs” and “buts” were candy and nuts, wouldn’t it be a Merry Christmas?  ~Don Meredith

Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.  ~Author Unknown

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The message of Christmas is that the visible material world is bound to the invisible spiritual world.  ~Author Unknown

I love the Christmas-tide, and yet,
I notice this, each year I live;
I always like the gifts I get,
But how I love the gifts I give!
~Carolyn Wells

‘Tis blessed to bestow, and yet,
Could we bestow the gifts we get,
And keep the ones we give away,
How happy were our Christmas day!
~Carolyn Wells

Except the Christ be born again tonight
In dreams of all men, saints and sons of shame,
The world will never see his kingdom bright.
~Vachel Lindsay

There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.  ~Erma Bombeck, I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression

The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C.  This wasn’t for any religious reasons.  They couldn’t find three wise men and a virgin.  ~Jay Leno

I hear that in many places something has happened to Christmas; that it is changing from a time of merriment and carefree gaiety to a holiday which is filled with tedium; that many people dread the day and the obligation to give Christmas presents is a nightmare to weary, bored souls; that the children of enlightened parents no longer believe in Santa Claus; that all in all, the effort to be happy and have pleasure makes many honest hearts grow dark with despair instead of beaming with good will and cheerfulness.  ~Julia Peterkin, A Plantation Christmas, 1934

The earth has grown old with its burden of care,
But at Christmas it always is young.
~Phillips Brooks

Let Christmas not become a thing
Merely of merchant’s trafficking,
Of tinsel, bell and holly wreath
And surface pleasure, but beneath
The childish glamour, let us find
Nourishment for soul and mind.
Let us follow kinder ways
Through our teeming human maze,
And help the age of peace to come
From a Dreamer’s martyrdom.
~Madeline Morse

Nothing’s as mean as giving a little child something useful for Christmas.  ~Kin Hubbard

Christmas begins about the first of December with an office party and ends when you finally realize what you spent, around April fifteenth of the next year.  ~P.J. O’Rourke, Modern Manners

Next to a circus there ain’t nothing that packs up and tears out faster than the Christmas spirit.  ~Kin Hubbard

Wouldn’t life be worth the living
Wouldn’t dreams be coming true
If we kept the Christmas spirit
All the whole year through?
~Author Unknown

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so?  It came without ribbons.  It came without tags.  It came without packages, boxes or bags.  And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore.  Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before.  What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store.  What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.  ~Dr. Seuss

O Christmas Sun!  What holy task is thine!
To fold a world in the embrace of God!
~Guy Wetmore Carryl

Christmas - that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance.  It may weave a spell of nostalgia.  Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance - a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved.  ~Augusta E. Rundel

Santa is very jolly because he knows where all the bad girls live.  ~Dennis Miller

People can’t concentrate properly on blowing other people to pieces if their minds are poisoned by thoughts suitable to the twenty-fifth of December.  ~Ogden Nash

Oh! lovely voices of the sky
Which hymned the Saviour’s birth,
Are ye not singing still on high,
Ye that sang, “Peace on earth”?
~Felicia Hemans

We hear the beating of wings over Bethlehem and a light that is not of the sun or of the stars shines in the midnight sky.  Let the beauty of the story take away all narrowness, all thought of formal creeds.  Let it be remembered as a story that has happened again and again, to men of many different races, that has been expressed through many religions, that has been called by many different names.  Time and space and language lay no limitations upon human brotherhood.  ~New York Times, 25 December 1937, quoted in Quotations for Special Occasions by Maud van Buren, 1938, published by The H.W. Wilson Company, New York

The only reason a great many American families don’t own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments.  ~Mad Magazine

Oh, for the good old days when people would stop Christmas shopping when they ran out of money.  ~Author Unknown

Shopping is better than sex.  If you’re not satisfied after shopping you can make an exchange for something you really like.  ~Adrienne Gusoff

But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith’s.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.  ~Oscar Wilde

Whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where to go shopping.  ~Bo Derek

When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping.  Men invade another country.  It’s a whole different way of thinking.  ~Elayne Boosler

If men liked shopping, they’d call it research.  ~Cynthia Nelms

A consumer is a shopper who is sore about something.  ~Harold Coffin

Shopping is a woman thing.  It’s a contact sport like football.  Women enjoy the scrimmage, the noisy crowds, the danger of being trampled to death, and the ecstasy of the purchase.  ~Erma Bombeck

The quickest way to know a woman is to go shopping with her.  ~Marcelene Cox

Shopping tip:  You can get shoes for 85 cents at the bowling alley.  ~Author Unknown

I always say shopping is cheaper than a psychiatrist.  ~Tammy Faye Bakker

A Christmas shopper’s complaint is one of long-standing.  ~Author Unknown

People will buy anything that is one to a customer.  ~Sinclair Lewis

The other line moves faster.  ~Etorre’s Observation

Buying something on sale is a very special feeling.  In fact, the less I pay for something, the more it is worth to me.  I have a dress that I paid so little for that I am afraid to wear it.  I could spill something on it, and then how would I replace it for that amount of money?  ~Rita Rudner

We used to build civilizations.  Now we build shopping malls.  ~Bill Bryson

I like my money right where I can see it - hanging in my closet.  ~From the television show Sex and the City

A bargain is something you can’t use at a price you can’t resist.  ~Franklin P. Jones

I love to go shopping.  I love to freak out salespeople.  They ask me if they can help me, and I say, “Have you got anything I’d like?”  Then they ask me what size I need, and I say, “Extra medium.”  ~Steven Wright

The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one.  ~Erma Bombeck

Anyone who believes the competitive spirit in America is dead has never been in a supermarket when the cashier opens another checkout line.  ~Ann Landers

The woman just ahead of you at the supermarket checkout has all the delectable groceries you didn’t even know they carried.  ~Mignon McLaughlin

A bargain ain’t a bargain unless it’s something you need.  ~Sidney Carroll

Credit buying is much like being drunk.  The buzz happens immediately and gives you a lift…. The hangover comes the day after.  ~Joyce Brothers

I went to a general store but they wouldn’t let me buy anything specific.  ~Steven Wright

Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.  ~Dave Barry

On the one hand, shopping is dependable:  You can do it alone, if you lose your heart to something that is wrong for you, you can return it; it’s instant gratification and yet something you buy may well last for years.  ~Judith Krantz

Ice hockey is a form of disorderly conduct in which the score is kept.
Doug Larson.

You can make a lot of money in this game. Just ask my ex-wives. Both of them are so rich that neither of their husbands work.
Lee Trevino

I went to a fight the other night and a hockey game broke out.
Rodney Dangerfield

On this team, we are all united in a common goal: to keep my job.
Lou Holtz

Sandy’s fastball was so fast, some batters would start to swing as he was on his way to the mound.
Jim Murray, on Sandy Koufax

I was such a dangerous hitter I even got intentional walks in batting practice.
Casey Stengel

Give me the fresh air, a beautiful partner, and a nice round of golf… and you can keep the fresh air and the round of golf.
Jack Benny

Some people skate to the puck. I skate to where the puck is going to be.
Wayne Gretzky.

We can’t win at home. We can’t win on the road. I just can’t figure out where else to play!
Pat Williams

He hit the ball so hard, I couldn’t even turn around in time to see it go over the fence.
Roger Clemens, on Bo Jackson

The sun doesn’t shine on the same dog’s butt every day but we sure didn’t expect a total eclipse.
Steve Sloan

Julian Dicks is everywhere. It’s like they’ve got eleven Dicks on the field.
Metro Radio, College Football

They always try to play with our minds. But that won’t work with our club. We’ve got 20 guys without brains.
Bobby Clarke

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each
other but in looking outward together in the same direction.
Antoine De Saint-Exupery
****************
We learned how to love each other by loving together
good things wholly outside each other.
Donald Hall
****************
Marriage isn’t supposed to make you happy -
it’s supposed to make you married.
Frank Pittman
****************
Marriage isn’t supposed to make you happy - and satisfied.
It’s your job to make your marriage happy - and satisfying.
Same goes for sex. It isn’t supposed to make you passionate and “hot”.
It’s up to you to make it passionate and “hot” - and intimate.
Diane Sollee, smartmarriages.com
****************
The development of a really good marriage is not a natural process.
It is an achievement.
David and Vera Mace
****************
Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths.
No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they
have been married a quarter of a century.
Mark Twain
****************
A good marriage is the union of two good forgivers.
Ruth Bell Graham
****************
Let there be spaces in your togetherness
Kahlil Gibran
****************
The challenge is to help couples turn “I Do” into “We Can.”
Scott Stanley, prepinc.com
***************
If you didn’t want to be improved, you shouldn’t have gotten married.
Nancy (Mrs Scott) Stanley
***************
It’s true what they say – all the good men are married. But it’s marriage that makes them good.
Gay Talese, Thy Neighbor’s Wife
****************
Be on the lookout for strain in each other, and with compassion and
understanding, lend a helping hand and a mature heart. Helping each other
manage emotional strain can yield creative alternatives and build a new
foundation for heart-based communication and hope.
Doc Childre
***************
They haven’t found Mr. Right. Maybe there’s just a Mr. OK or Mr. Pretty Good.
Linda Waite, coauthor, The Case for Marriage
******************
And, on the case for finding Mr or Ms right, the case for pacing and a 2-year
courtship:
There was a study about children, marshmallows and delayed
gratification. Researchers found that children who can delay
gratification by saving marshmallows until a later time turn out to be
happier and better adjusted later in life. We feel better when we are
in control of our desires and, particularly, our behaviors.

The temptation is to have it NOW. One man wrote to me and said:
I have learned that everything in life is instant gratification. I
just don’t know the instant it will happen. So I just do what is
in front of me to do, be patient, and wait for that instant.
Steve Goodier’s Life Support Blog
******************
You can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three
things: a rainy day, lost luggage and tangled Christmas tree lights.
Maya Angelou
***************

In marriage, as in all things, the perfect can be the enemy of the good.
unknown
******************
Getting married is the boldest and most idealistic thing that
most of us will ever do.
Maggie Gallagher, coauthor, The Case for Marriage
******************
Both men and women live longer, happier, healthier and wealthier lives
when they are married. Unmarried co-habitation doesn’t cut it. Cohabitation
does not bring the benefits - in physical health, wealth, and emotional wellbeing
- that marriage does. And, married people have both more and better sex
than do their unmarried counterparts.
Linda Waite, The Case for Marriage
******************
Divorce causes a decrease in wealth that is larger than just splitting a
couple’s assets in half. By the same token, married people see an increase in
wealth that is more than just adding the assets of two single people.
On the other hand, divorce can devastate your wealth. Divorce drops a
person’s wealth by an average of 77%. Contrary to popular belief,
the research shows that the wealth of divorced women wasn’t significantly
worse than that of divorced men, in terms of real money. If you really
want to increase your wealth, get married and stay married.
Jay Zagorsky, Ohio State, Journal of Sociology, Jan 2006
******************
Being married is like having somebody permanently in your corner,
it feels limitless, not limited.
Gloria Steinem, 2000, upon marrying for the first time at age 66
******************
The sweetest love I ever had/I left aside
Because I did not want to be/ any man’s bride . . .
Control your mind my girl/ and give your heart to one
For if you love all men/ you’ll surely be left with none
Eve Cassidy, Tall Trees in Georga on having chosen independence over love
*****************

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Simon Rattle
If anyone has conducted a Beethoven performance, and then doesn’t have to go to an osteopath, then there’s something wrong.

Kevin Richardson
It was called the Backstreet Market, and it was just like a local hangout. That was where the kids would drive their cars, hang out with their convertibles and listen to music. That’s how we got “Backstreet.” We put “Boys” on it, because no matter how old we get, we’ll always be boys.

Robbie Robertson
Music should never be harmless.

Gioacchino Antonio Rossini
Give me a laundry list and I’ll set it to music.

Johann G. Seume
Music is the key to the female heart.

William Shakespeare
Is it not strange that sheep’s guts should hale souls out of men’s bodies?

John Philip Sousa
Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.

George Steiner
The new sound-sphere is global. It ripples at great speed across languages, ideologies, frontiers and races. The economics of this musical Esperanto is staggering. Rock and pop breed concentric worlds of fashion, setting and life-style. Popular music has brought with it sociologies of private and public manner, of group solidarity. The politics of Eden come loud.

Igor Stravinsky
A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

George Szell
Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra, not choreography to the audience.

Jeffrey Tate
The most perfect expression of human behavior is a string quartet.

Frank Zappa
Remember, information is not knowledge; knowledge is not wisdom; wisdom is not truth; truth is not beauty; beauty is not love; love is not music; music is the best.

James Taylor
I would advise you to keep your overhead down; avoid a major drug habit; play everyday, and take it in front of other people. They need to hear it, and you need them to hear it.

Paul Whiteman
Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.

Oscar Wilde
Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don’t listen, and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.

Ron Wood
There’s a basic rule which runs through all kinds of music, kind of an unwritten rule. I don’t know what it is. But I’ve got it.

Yoko Ono
All my concerts had no sounds in them; they were completely silent. People had to make up their own music in their minds!

Frank Zappa
There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we’d all love one another.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719), English essayist, poet, statesman
Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.

George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), [Lord Byron] English romantic poet
There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more.

Truman Capote (1924-84), American novelist, short-story writer, Breakfast at Tiffany’s
To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the music the words make.

Truman Capote (1924-84), American novelist, short-story writer, Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

Jim Davis (b. 1945), cartoonist
There are so many opportunities in life, that the loss of two or three capabilities is not necessarily debilitating. A handicap can give you the opportunity to focus more on art, writing, or music.

Agnes de Mile (1905-93)
The truest expression of a people is in its dance and music.

Maurice Druon, From the Memoirs of Zeus
Number is the Word but is not utterance; it is wave and light, though no one sees it; it is rhythm and music, though no one hears it. Its variations are limitless and yet it is immutable. Each form of life is a particular reverberation of Number.

Gerald Early, writer, baseball documentary
I think there are only three things America will be known for 2,000 years from now when they study this civilization: the Constitution, jazz music, and baseball.

Eric Anderson
It is only by introducing the young to great literature, drama and music, and to the excitement of great science that we open to them the possibilities that lie within the human spirit—enable them to see visions and dream dreams.

June Masters Bacher
Love is like a violin. The music may stop now and then, but the strings remain forever.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-87), American clergyman
Of all the music that reached farthest into heaven, it is the beating of a loving heart.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-87), American clergyman
Of all the earthly music, that which reaches farthest into heaven is the beating of a truly loving heart.

Doc Childre and Bruce Cryer, From Chaos to Coherence
As any jazz musician knows, it takes flexibility and adaptability for improvisation to create beauty.

Doc Childre and Howard Martin, HeartMath Solution
At that elusive moment when we transcend our ordinary performance and feel in harmony with something else—whether it’s a glorious sunset, inspiring music or another human being—our studies have shown that what we are really coming in sync with is ourselves. Not only do we feel more relaxed and at peace, but this entrained state increases our ability to perform well and offers numerous health benefits.

Albert Einstein
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice.

Katie Greenwood
Music isn’t just learning notes and playing them, You learn notes to play to the music of your soul.

Anon
A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn’t like the tune.

Joseph Addison
Music, the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heaven we have below.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both.

Jacques Attali
Today, music heralds… the establishment of a society of repetition in which nothing will happen anymore.

Red Auerbach
Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

Sir Thomas Beecham
There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn’t give a damn what goes on in between.

Ludwig Van Beethoven
Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

Benjamin Britten
It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness and of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature, and everlasting beauty of monotony.

James Brown
I’ve outdone anyone you can name — Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500.

Mariah Carey
A lot of people are singing about how screwed up the world is, and I don’t think that everybody wants to hear about that all the time.

Thomas Carlyle
Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.

Mary Chapin Carpenter
It’s a marvelous feeling when someone says “I want to do this song of yours” because they’ve connected to it. That’s what I’m after.

Pat Conroy
Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Noel Coward
Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

George Eliot (1819-80), [Mary Ann Evans] British writer
There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.

Aretha Franklin, [Queen of Soul] Motown singer, performer
I’ve always felt rock and roll was very, very wholesome music.

Buddy Holly
Without Elvis, none of us could have made it.

Harlan Howard
Country music is three chords and the truth.

George Jellinek
The history of a people is found in its songs.

Billy Joel
I think music in itself is healing. It’s an explosive expression of humanity. It’s something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we’re from, everyone loves music.

James Weldon Johnson
It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives it most distinctive characteristics.

Geoffrey Latham
Music is the vernacular of the human soul.

Hal A. Lingerman
Just as certain selections of music will nourish your physical body and your emotional layer, so other musical works will bring greater health to your mind.

Witold Lutoslawski
People whose sensibility is destroyed by music in trains, airports, lifts, cannot concentrate on a Beethoven Quartet.

Thomas Mann
There is something suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is, by her nature, equivocal. I shall not be going too far in saying at once that she is politically suspect.

Pietro Mascagni
Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.

Henry Miller
Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don’t take it too seriously.

Theodore Mungers
Like everything else in nature, music is a becoming, and it becomes its full self, when its sounds and laws are used by intelligent man for the production of harmony, and so made the vehicle of emotion and thought.

Ernest Newman
A good composer is slowly discovered a bad composer is slowly found out.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Without music, life would be an error. The German imagines even God singing songs.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) - Famous Writer
Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.

Charlie Parker
Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.

Zimbabwe Proverb
If you can walk you can dance. If you can talk you can sing.

Warren G. Bennis (b. 1925), American writer, educator, University of Southern California sociologist
Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.

Phillips Brooks (1835-93), American Episcopal bishop, wrote O’ Little Town of Bethlehem
The earth has grown old with its burden of care But at Christmas it always is young, The heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair And its soul full of music breaks the air, When the song of angels is sung.

Samuel Butler (1612-80), English poet, author
Every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

Samuel Butler (1612-80), English poet, author
Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases, though not often.

Howard Dietz
Composers shouldn’t think too much — it interferes with their plagiarism.

Placido Domingo
The high note is not the only thing.

Lawrence Durrell
Music was invented to confirm human loneliness.

Antonin Dvorak
Mozart is sweet sunshine.

T. S. Eliot
You are the music while the music lasts.

Liam Gallagher
Americans want grungy people, stabbing themselves in the head on stage. They get a bright bunch like us, with deodorant on, they don’t get it.

George Gershwin
True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today.

Billy Gibbons
Sounds like the blues are composed of feeling, finesse, and fear.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
The effects of good music are not just because it’s new; on the contrary music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it.

Tipper Gore
Your talking to someone who really understands rock music.

Benny Green
A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.

Steven Halpern
When Mozart was composing at the end of the eighteenth century, the city of Vienna was so quiet that fire alarms could be given verbally, by a shouting watchman mounted on top of St. Stefan’s Cathedral. In twentieth-century society, the noise level is such that it keeps knocking our bodies out of tune and out of their natural rhythms. This ever-increasing assault of sound upon our ears, minds, and bodies adds to the stress load of civilized beings trying to live in a highly complex environment.

Sir John Herschel
Music and dancing (the more the pity) have become so closely associated with ideas of riot and debauchery among the less cultivated classes, that a taste for them, for their own sakes, can hardly be said to exist, and before they can be recommended as innocent or safe amusements, a very great change of ideas must take place.

Albert Einstein (1875-1955), German-born American theoretical physicist, theories of relativity, philosopher
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.