Instruments Quotes - Page 27

• The brain is more than an assemblage of autonomous modules, each crucial for a specific mental function. Every one of these functionally specialized areas must interact with dozens or hundreds of others, their total integration creating something like a vastly complicated orchestra with thousands of instruments, an orchestra that conducts itself, with an ever-changing score and repertoire.

  Oliver Sacks

  Creating, Brain, Orchestra

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• The body is the instrument of our hold on the world.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  World, Body

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• If all experienced God in the same way and returned Him an identical worship, the song of the Church triumphant would have no symphony, it would be played like an orchestra in which all instruments played the same note.

  C. S. Lewis

  Song, Symphony, Church

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.184, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Shiny musical instruments wailed, their mouths open like lilies.

  Ismail Kadaré

  Musical, Lilies, Mouths

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• And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  May, Wonderful, Source

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Silmarillion”, p.18, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• ...The next time I opened my eyes, I was in the morgue. This, all by itself, is enough to really ruin your day. I was lying on the examining table, and Butters, complete with his surgical gown and his tray of autopsy instruments, stood over me. 'I'm not dead!' I sputtered. 'I'm not dead!' - Harry Dresden, Death Masks, Jim Butcher

  Jim Butcher

  Lying, Eye, Gowns

  Jim Butcher (2003). “Death Masks: Book five of The Dresden Files”, p.359, Penguin Group

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• . . . the number of prayers we say may contribute to our happiness, but the number of prayers we answer may be of greater importance. Let us open our eyes and see the heavy hearts, notice the loneliness and despair; let us feel the silent prayers of others around us; and let us be an instrument in the hands of the Lord to answer those prayers.

  Dieter F. Uchtdorf

  Prayer, Loneliness, Heart

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• Are you trying to weasel out of showing us any of this stuff?" said Zacharias Smith. "Here's an idea," said Ron loudly, "why don't you shut your mouth?" "Well, we've all turned up to learn from him, and now he's telling us he can't really do any of it," he said. "That's not what he said," said Fred Weasley. "Would you like us to clean out your ears for you?" inquired George, pulling a long and lethal-looking metal instrument from inside one of the Zonko's bags. "Or any part of your body, really, we're not fussy where we stick this," said Fred.

  J. K. Rowling

  Ideas, Long, Trying

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• Attack your instruments. Don't let them attack you.

  Billie Joe Armstrong

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• That Hegelian dialectics should provide a wonderful instrument for always being right, because they permit the interpretations of all defeats as the beginning of victory, is obvious. One of the most beautiful examples of this kind of sophistry occurred after 1933 when the German Communists for nearly two years refused to recognize that Hitler's victory had been a defeat for the German Communist Party.

  Hannah Arendt

  Beautiful, Party, Years

  Hannah Arendt (1968). “Totalitarianism: Part Three of The Origins of Totalitarianism”, p.71, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will.

  Margaret Atwood

  Mean, Thinking, Accomplishment

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.73, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We are God’s gift to each other. Like a master composer, He brings all the instruments together, each with a different tone, each playing a different part, and He makes it turn out so beautifully.

  Jack Canfield

  Together, Different, Tone

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• The violin - that most human of all instruments.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Violin, Humans

  Louisa May Alcott (2015). “Little Men: Life at Plumfield with Jo's Boys & A Sequel - Jo's Boys and How They Turned Out (Children’s Classics Series – Illustrated Edition)”, p.510, e-artnow

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• Tonight I will suck the marrow from your bones!” it said. “I will dry them and work them most cunningly into instruments of music! Whenever I play upon them, your spirit will writhe in bodiless agony!” “You burn prettily,” I said.

  Roger Zelazny

  Play, Agony, Tonight

  Roger Zelazny (1978). “The Chronicles of Amber: Nine princes in Amber”

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• Headbangers' are people who like heavy-metal music, which is performed by skinny men with huge hair who stomp around the stage, striking their instruments and shrieking angrily, apparently because somebody has stolen all their shirts.

  Dave Barry

  Men, Hair, People

  Dave Barry (2010). “Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up”, p.244, Ballantine Books

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• What an unfortunate instrument the guitar is! An instrument of such great nobility, a genuine monarch of music-- reduced to a pitiful lump of wood with six strings, constantly abused by people with no ear and no voice.

  Sergei Lukyanenko

  Guitar, Voice, People

  Sergei Lukyanenko, Vladimir Nikolaevich Vasilʹev (2007). “Day watch”, Miramax

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• I call her Wild Woman, for those very words, wild and woman, create llamar o tocar a la puerta, the fairy-tale knock at the door of the deep feminine psyche. Llamar o tocar a la puerta means literally to play upon the instrument of the name in order to open a door. It means using words that summon up the opening of a passageway. No matter by which culture a woman is influenced, she understands the words wild and woman, intuitively.

  Clarissa Pinkola Estes

  Mean, Doors, Order

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• I now understood the secret of music and knew what makes it so infinitely superior to all the other arts: its incorporeality. Once it has left an instrument it becomes its own master, a free and independent creature of sound, weightless, incorporeal and perfectly in tune with the universe.

  Walter Moers

  Art, Independent, Secret

  Walter Moers (2008). “The City of Dreaming Books”, p.122, The Overlook Press

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• Of all man’s instruments, the most wondrous, no doubt, is the book. The other instruments are extensions of his body. The microscope, the telescope, are extensions of his sight; the telephone is the extension of his voice; then we have the plow and the sword, extensions of the arm. But the book is something else altogether: the book is an extension of memory and imagination.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Memories, Book, Men

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• There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing... I am a recording instrument... I do not presume to impose "story" "plot" "continuity"... Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function... I am not an entertainer.

  William S. Burroughs

  Writing, Psychics, Plot

  William S. Burroughs (2007). “Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader”, p.169, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• We are all instruments pulling the bows across our own lungs. Windmills, still startling in every storm. Have you ever seen a newborn blinking at the light? I wanna do that every day. I wanna know what the kite called itself when it got away, when it escaped into the night.

  Andrea Gibson

  Night, Light, Storm

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• I almost tell him that I'd never be able to do something like that, just take out my instrument and begin playing on a street corner. But it feels to personal. Yes, I'm shy, but why bring it to his attention? I'm too shy to talk about how shy I am.

  Andrew Clements

  Shy, Attention, Able

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• Always turn to God in the midst of your struggle and view people who offended you as an instruments of divine sovereignty.

  John C. Maxwell

  Struggle, Offended You, Views

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• Intelligence is a mere instrument of circumstances.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Circumstances, Mere

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2016). “The Beautiful and Damned: American Literature”, p.207, VM eBooks

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• A public-school system, if it means the providing of free education for those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficent achievement of modern times; but when once it becomes monopolistic it is the most perfect instrument for tyranny which has yet been devised. Freedom of thought in the middle ages was combated by the Inquisition, but the modern method is far more effective.’ (1923)

  John Gresham Machen

  School, Mean, Free Education

  John Gresham Machen (1923). “Christianity and Liberalism”, p.14, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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