Instruments Quotes - Page 29

• Each woman is like an instrument, waiting to be learned, loved, and finely played, to have at last her own true music made.

  Patrick Rothfuss

  Waiting, Lasts, Made

  Patrick Rothfuss (2011). “The Wise Man's Fear: The Kingkiller Chronicle: Day Two”, p.651, Penguin

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• Then the musical instruments appeared. Dad’s snare drum from the house, Henry’s guitar from his car, Adam’s spare guitar from my room. Everyone was jamming together, singing songs: Dad’s songs, Adam’s songs, old Clash songs, old Wipers songs. Teddy was dancing around, the blond of his hair reflecting the golden flames. I remember watching it all and getting that tickling in my chest and thinking to myself: This is what happiness feels like.

  Gayle Forman

  Song, Dad, Thinking

  Gayle Forman (2009). “If I Stay”, p.107, Penguin

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• HAND, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Hands, Pockets, Arms

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.105, University of Georgia Press

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• We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world....No doubt pain as God's megaphone is a terrible instrument; it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion. But it gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment. it removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of the rebel soul.

  C. S. Lewis

  Pain, Opportunity, Men

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• I noticed you the first week. Not just because of how pretty you are, though of course, that played into it. It was the way you lean onto your elbows when you 're listening in class, when something catches your interest. And when you laugh, it's never to get attention, it's just-laughter. The way you obssevively tuck your hair behind your ear on the left side, but let the right side fall down like a screen. And when you 're bored, you tap your foot soundlessly and move your fingers on the desktop like you 're playing an instrument. I wanted to sketch you.

  Tammara Webber

  Laughter, Moving, Fall

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• A gesture cannot be regarded as the expression of an individual, as his creation (because no individual is capable of creating a fully original gesture, belonging to nobody else), nor can it even be regarded as that person's instrument; on the contrary, it is gestures that use us as their instruments, as their bearers and incarnations

  Milan Kundera

  Expression, Creating, Individuality

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• myself ... is merely an instrument to connect life and a myth

  Anais Nin

  Myth

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• Markets are useful instruments for organizing productive activity. But unless we want to let the market rewrite the norms that govern social institutions, we need a public debate about the moral limits of markets.

  Michael Sandel

  Needs, Want, Limits

  Michael J. Sandel (2009). “Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?”, p.265, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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• Take up a weapon and you become an instrument with as pure a purpose as the weapon itself: to find arteries and open them, limbs and sever them; to take what is alive and deliver it unto death.

  Laini Taylor

  Purpose, Alive, Weapons

  Laini Taylor (2015). “The Complete Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy”, p.447, Hachette UK

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• The same applies to any artist; we are the tools and instruments of our talent. We are outsiders; we have no place in society because society is what we’re watching, and dealing with.

  William Trevor

  Artist, Tools, Outsiders

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• I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own. He has to make it do what he wants it to do. And a piano is just a piano. It's made out of so much wood and wires and little hammers and big ones, and ivory. While there's only so much you can do with it, the only way to find this out is to try; to try and make it do everything.

  James A. Baldwin

  Ivory, Piano, Trying

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• Punk was perfect for lazy people, because anyone could do it--you didn't even need to know how to play your instrument, assuming you knew how to plug it in. There was really no difference between Sid Vicious and anyone in London who owned a bass.

  Chuck Klosterman

  Lazy People, Play, Differences

  Chuck Klosterman (2012). “Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey In Rural North Dakota”, p.73, Simon and Schuster

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• For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of 'brainwashing under freedom' to which we are subjected and which all too often we serve as willing or unwitting instruments.

  Noam Chomsky

  Freedom, Practice, Tasks

  "The Chomsky Reader". Book by Noam Chomsky, 1987.

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• Christ alone, of all the philosophers, magicians, etc., has affirmed eternal life as the most important certainty, the infinity of time, the futility of death, the necessity and purpose of serenity and devotion. He lived serenely, as an artist greater than all other artists, scorning marble and clay and paint, working in the living flesh. In other words, this peerless artist, scarcely conceivable with the blunt instrument of our modern, nervous and obtuse brains, made neither statues nor paintings nor books. He maintained in no uncertain terms that he made ... living men, immortals.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Book, Artist, Men

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• I still believe in man in spite of man. I believe in language even though it has been wounded, deformed, and perverted by the enemies of mankind. And I continue to cling to words because it is up to us to transform them into instruments of comprehension rather than contempt. It is up to us to choose whether we wish to use them to curse or to heal, to wound or to console.

  Elie Wiesel

  Inspirational, Sympathy, Believe

  Elie Wiesel (2012). “Open Heart”, p.73, Schocken

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• It amazed me how some people could touch an instrument and create something so beautiful, and when others tried, like me, it just sounded like mangled noise.

  Ruta Sepetys

  Beautiful, People, Noise

  Ruta Sepetys (2013). “Out of The Easy”, p.31, Penguin

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• When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts ... Who knows what use they’ll make of you? Maybe you’ll help them to persuade people to buy things they don’t need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them.

  Michael Ende

  Hate, Lying, People

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• We are gripped by God’s will of love, and must help carry out that will in this world, in small things as in great things, in saving as in pardoning. To be glad instruments of God’s love in this imperfect world is the service to which we are called.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Imperfect World, Saving, Helping

  Albert Schweitzer, Steven E. G. Melamed (2003). “The African Sermons”, p.20, Syracuse University Press

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• Enjoy your body, use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Thinking, People, Use

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• I wouldn't call that an instrument of music," Ragnor observed sourly. "An instrument of torture, perhaps.

  Cassandra Clare

  Torture, Ragnor Fell

  Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan (2013). “What Really Happened in Peru”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

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• Ragnor and Catarina both begged him to give the instrument up. Random strangers on the street begged him to give the instrument up. Even cats ran away from him.

  Cassandra Clare

  Cat, Giving, Stranger

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• Music is the one art we all have inside. We may not be able to play an instrument, but we can sing along or clap or tap our feet. Have you ever seen a baby bouncing up and down in the crib in time to some music? When you think of it, some of that baby's first messages from his or her parents may have been lullabies, or at least the music of their speaking voices. All of us have had the experience of hearing a tune from childhood and having that melody evoke a memory or a feeling. The music we hear early on tends to stay with us all our lives.

  Fred Rogers

  Baby, Art, Memories

  Fred Rogers (2004). “The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember”, Large Print Press

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• Psychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish. Your greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of self-understanding is endless. I'm still learning.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Self, Medicine, Understanding

  Irvin D. Yalom (2012). “The Spinoza Problem: A Novel”, p.167, Basic Books

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• One cannot walk down an avenue, converse with a friend, enter a building, browse beneath the sandstone arches of an old arcade without meeting an instrument of time. Time is visible in all places. Clock towers, wristwatches, church bells divide years into months, months into days, days into hours, hours into seconds, each increment of time marching after the other in perfect succession. And beyond any particular clock, a vast scaffold of time, stretching across the universe, lays down the law of time equally for all.

  Alan Lightman

  Time, Church Bells, Years

  Alan Lightman (2011). “Einstein's Dreams”, p.25, Vintage

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• If the photographer is interested in the people in front of his lens, and if he is compassionate, it's already a lot. The instrument is not the camera but the photographer.

  Eve Arnold

  Inspirational, Photography, People

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