As he grew accustomed to the great gallery of machines, he began to feel the forty-foot dynamos as a moral force, much as the earl...y Christians felt the Cross. The planet itself seemed less impressive, in its old-fashioned, deliberate, annual or daily revolution, than this huge wheel, revolving within arm's-length at some vertiginous speed, and barely murmuring,--scarcely humming an audible warning to stand a hair's-breadth further for respect of power,--while it would not wake the baby lying close against its frame.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not f...or the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible. Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The force of truth that a statement imparts, then, its prominence among the hordes of recorded observations that I may optionally ...apply to my own life, depends, in addition to the sense that it is argumentatively defensible, on the sense that someone like me, and someone I like, whose voice is audible and who is at least notionally in the same room with me, does or can possibly hold it to be compellingly true.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Kitchens were different then, too--not only what came out of them, but their smells and sounds. A hot pie cooling smells different... from a frozen pie thawing. Oilcloth and linoleum and apples in an open bowl and ruffled rubber aprons make a different aromatic mix from Formica and ceramic tile and mangoes in an acrylic fruit ripener and plastic-coated aprons printed with "Who invited all these tacky people?" And the kitchen sounds. I am not sure that today's kitchen is noisier. But the noises are different. Today you get the song of the food processor and the blender, the intermittent hum of the reefer and the freezer, the buzz-slosh-and-grunt of the dishwasher, the violently audible digestive processes of the waste disposal in the sink. Then it was the whir and clatter of the hand-powered eggbeater, the thunk-thunk-thunk of somebody mashing potatoes, or, in green-pea season, the crisp pop of pea pod and the rattle-rattle-rattle of peas into the pan.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I could heartily wish that you may often be seen to smile, but never heard to laugh while you live. Frequent and loud laughter is ...the characteristic of folly and ill manners; it is the manner in which the mob express their silly joy at silly things; and they call it being merry. In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter. True wit, or sense, never yet made any body laugh; they are above it. They please the mind, and give a cheerfulness to the countenance. But it is low buffoonery, or silly accidents, that always excite laughter; and that is what people of sense and breeding should show themselves above.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Audible prayer can never do the works of spiritual understanding, which regenerates; but silent prayer, watchfulness, and devout o...bedience enable us to follow Jesus' example. Long prayers, superstition, and creeds clip the strong pinions of love, and clothe religion in human forms. Whatever materializes worship hinders man's spiritual growth and keeps him from demonstrating his power over error.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
His lordship pronounced his assent to take to wife his destined prey (in the words "I will"), with a voice as audible as generally... breaks forth from a mouth vacated by the inhabitants, its teeth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Music, theoretically considered, consists altogether of lines of tone. It more nearly resembles a picture or an architectural draw...ing, than any other art creation; the difference being that in a drawing the lines are visible and constant, while in music they are audible and in motion. The separate tones are the points through which the lines are drawn; and the impression which is intended, and which is apprehended by the intelligent listener, is not that of single tones, but of continuous lines of tones, describing movements, curves and angles, rising, falling, poising--directly analogous to the linear impressions conveyed by a picture or drawing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It was like being quite alone on the roof of the world. I felt that if I were to go to the edge and look over ... I would see belo...w all that I had ever known; all the crowded cities and seas covered with ships, and the clamor of harbors and traffic of rivers, and farmlands being worked, and herds of cattle driven in dust across interminable plains. All the clamor and clatter, confusion of voices, tumults, and conflicts, must still be going on, down there--over the edge, and below--but here there was only the sky, and a stillness made audible by the brittle grass. Emptiness was so perfect all around me that I felt a part of it, empty myself ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »