"The Prelude to Tristan and Isolde reminds me of the old Italian painting of a martyr whose intestines are slowly unwound from his body on a reel."

Eduard Hanslick Philosophy See all quotes by Eduard Hanslick →

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“You cannot imagine the wild enthusiasm that these two men created in Vienna. Newspapers went into raptures over each new waltz, and innumerable articles appeared about Lanner and Strauss.”

“The beautiful is and remains beautiful though it arouse no emotion whatever, and though there be no one to look at it. In other words, although the beautiful exists for the gratification of an observer, it is independent of him. In this sense music, too, has no aim , and the mere fact that this particular art is so closely bound up with our feelings by no means justifies the assumption that its aesthetic principles depend on this union.”

“a language which we speak and understand but cannot translate”

“Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.”

Resonant Thoughts

"The whole Renaissance tradition is antipathic to me. The hard-and-fast rules of perspective which it succeeded in imposing on art were a ghastly mistake which it has taken four centuries to redress; C…"

— Georges Braque

Art1882–1963

#art

"Try to avoid painting in places where they still point at aeroplanes."

— Banksy

Politics1973

#art

"In Hilary Term 1636, 7. I took the Degree of Batchelor of Arts; and in 1640, the Degree of Master of Arts, and then left Emanuel College; and the same year I entered into Holy Orders, ordained by Bish…"

— John Wallis

Mathematics1616–1703

#art

"The English, like ancient medals, kept more apart, and passing but few people’s hands, preserve the first sharpnesses which the fine hand of Nature has given them;—they are not so pleasant to feel,—bu…"

— Laurence Sterne

Religion1713–1768

#nature