Sometimes a musical phrase would perfectly sum up The mood of a moment. One of those lovelorn sonatas... For wind instruments was riding past on a solemn white horse. Everybody wondered who the new arrival was.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less... socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Printed prose is historically a most peculiar, almost an aberrant way of telling stories, and by far the most inherently anestheti...c: It is the only medium of art I can think of which appeals directly to none of our five senses. The oral and folk tradition in narrative made use of verse or live-voice dynamics, embellished by gesture and expression--a kind of rudimentary theater--as do the best raconteurs of all times. Commonly there was musical accompaniment as well: a kind of one-man theater-of-mixed-means.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Who among us has not, in moments of ambition, dreamt of the miracle of a form of poetic prose, musical but without rhythm and rhym...e, both supple and staccato enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of our souls, the undulating movements of our reveries, and the convulsive movements of our consciences? This obsessive ideal springs above all from frequent contact with enormous cities, from the junction of their innumerable connections.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one ...when it is woven.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Give blue-eyed men their swivel chairs To whirl in tall buildings.... Allow them many ships at sea, And on land, soldiers And policemen.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A pregnant woman and her spouse dream of three babies--the perfect four-month-old who rewards them with smiles and musical cooing,... the impaired baby, who changes each day, and the mysterious real baby whose presence is beginning to be evident in the motions of the fetus.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We all have known Good critics, who have stamped out poet's hopes;... Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state; Good patriots, who, for a theory, risked a cause; Good kings, who disembowelled for a tax; Good Popes, who brought all good to jeopardy; Good Christians, who sat still in easy-chairs; And damned the general world for standing up.-- Now, may the good God pardon all good men!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »