Minors Quotes - Page 24

• Now I've heard there was a secret chord That David played, and it pleased the Lord But you don't really care for music, do you? It goes like this the fourth, the fifth The minor fall, the major lift The baffled king composing Hallelujah

  Leonard Cohen

  Kings, Fall, Secret

  Song: Hallelujah

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• They say that no one's gonna play this on the radio. They said the melancholy blues were dead and gone. But only songs like these played in minor keys, keep those memories holding on.

  Billy Joel

  Song, Memories, Keys

  Song: Baby Grand, Album: The Bridge, 1986

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• Our peasant music, naturally, is invariably tonal, if not always in the sense that the inflexible major and minor system is tonal. (An "atonal" folk-music, in my opinion, is unthinkable.) Since we depend upon a tonal basis of this kind in our creative work, it is quite self-evident that our works are quite pronouncedly tonal in type. I must admit, however, that there was a time when I thought I was approaching a species of twelve-tone music. Yet even in works of that period the absolute tonal foundation is unmistakable.

  Bela Bartok

  Self, Creative, Tone

  "The Listening Composer". Book by George Perle, pp. 46-47, 1996.

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• We're not playing some minor game in Scientology. It isn't cute or something to do for lack of something better. The whole agonized future of this planet, every Man, Woman and Child on it, and your own destiny for the next endless trillions of years depend on what you do here and now with and in Scientology.

  L. Ron Hubbard

  Cute, Children, Destiny

  "Keeping Scientology Working". Scientology Policy Letter, February 07, 1965.

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• Among minor alterations, I may mention the substitution for the name political economy of the single convenient term economics. I cannot help thinking that it would be well to discard, as quickly as possible, the old troublesome double-worded name of our science.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Thinking, Names, Political

  William Stanley Jevons (1970). “The Theory of Political Economy”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• When people listen to my music, I hope that they will notice that if you take a piece by a composer like Schubert, the major and the minor triad is an extermely important thing not merely as harmony, but in creating melodic lines. Schubert is always walking up and down with arpeggios on C, E, G and so forth. I am not doing anything different really, except using a different system of harmony.

  Elliott Carter

  Creating, People, Important

  Interview with Joel Bons, as quoted in notes for album "Elliott Carter: Homages and Dedications" (CD booklet, p. 17), 2003.

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• Oftentimes the fascinating thing is that people who are seen as commanding figures at the moment that they were considered for President and did not run turned out to be treated by history as much more minor figures politically.

  Stephen Ambrose

  Running, People, President

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• To talk of prayer after admitting he professed no faith was, in my opinion, a breach of common courtesy. In this sense, he did make a social blunder, for which I think he well deserved some minor castigation.

  Kenzaburo Oe

  Prayer, Thinking, Admitting

  "A Quiet Life". Book by Kenzaburo Oe, 1990.

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• Every small wrong, every minor act of cruelty, every act of petty bullying was symbolic of a greater wrong. And if we ignored these small things, then did it not blunt our outrage over the larger wrongs?

  Alexander McCall Smith

  Bullying, Ignored, Blunt

  Alexander McCall Smith (2010). “The Unbearable Lightness of Scones”, p.202, Anchor

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• A man who falls straight into bed night after night, and ceases to live until the moment when he wakes and rises, will surely never dream of making, I don't say great discoveries, but even minor observations about sleep. He scarcely knows that he is asleep. A little insomnia is not without its value in making us appreciate sleep, in throwing a ray of light upon that darkness.

  Marcel Proust

  Dream, Fall, Sleep

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV: Sodom and Gomorrah (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.69, Modern Library

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• There was a time when corporations played a minor part in our business affairs, but now they play the chief part, and most men are the servants of corporations.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Men, Play, Corporations

  Woodrow Wilson, Ronald J. Pestritto (2005). “Woodrow Wilson: the essential political writings”

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• No film ever ends up exactly as you would like it to, but with minor exceptions, THX came out pretty much as I had visualized it, thanks to some excellent assistance -- and a whole lot of luck.

  George Lucas

  Luck, Thanks, Film

  George Lucas, Sally Kline (1999). “George Lucas: Interviews”, p.13, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Looking at the poems of John Gray when I saw the tiniest rivulet of text meandering through the very largest meadow of margin, I suggested to Oscar Wilde that he should go a step further than these minor poets; he should publish a book all margin; full of beautiful, unwritten thoughts.

  Ada Leverson

  Beautiful, Book, Oscars

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• Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or bicycle.

  Alain de Botton

  Reality, Optimism, Lines

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2008.

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• For me there is no gap between my painting and my so-called 'decorative' work. I never considered the 'minor arts' to be artistically frustrating; on the contrary, it was an extension of my art.

  Sonia Delaunay

  Art, Gaps, Painting

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• It is often said it is no matter what a man believes if he is only sincere. This is true of all minor truths, and false of all truths whose nature it is to fashion a man's life. It will make no difference in a man's harvest whether he thinks turnips have more saccharine matter than potatoes--whether corn is better than wheat. But let the man sincerely believe that seed planted without ploughing is as good as with, that January is as favorable for seed sowing as April, and that cockle seed will produce as good a harvest as wheat, and will it make no difference?

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Fashion, Believe, Men

  henry ward beecher (1858). “life thoughts,”, p.16

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• Yesterday woman was a chattel. Now she is, in law, a minor. Tomorrow she will be free, or partially so--that is to say, as free as man.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Women, Law, Yesterday

  Harry Persons Taber, Elbert Hubbard (1914). “The Philistine”

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• My heart is tuned to sorrow, and the strings Vibrate most readily to minor chords, Searching and sad; my mind is stuffed with words Which voice the passion and the ache of things: Illusions beating with their baffled wings Against the walls of circumstance.

  Amy Lowell

  Wall, Passion, Heart

  Amy Lowell (1955). “Complete poetical works: With an introd. by Louis Untermeyer”

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• Can compromise be an art? Yes--but a minor art.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Art, Compromise

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• There seems to be no end to the senseless wickedness done on this little planet in a minor solar system, and we puny mortals appear to be decreasing in importance so far as the universe is concerned.

  Alec Guinness

  Done, Wickedness, Littles

  Alec Guinness (1998). “My Name Escapes Me: The Diary of a Retiring Actor”, Penguin Mass Market

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• In almost every single way, George and I share the same values. And if we differ on some issues, it's very, very minor.

  Laura Bush

  Issues, Way, Share

  CBS News, June 24, 2004.

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• The very word "change" has changed. When I was young--and not just because I was young--we looked forward with confident impatience to change. Planned, controlled, beneficent change would continue to clear slums, sweep up the remains of empire, raise living and educational standards, tidy away--firmly but kindly--the last aboriginals who still raved about martial glory or the pride of wealth. Now, as it seems to me, change is set almost exclusively in the minor key, change seen overwhelmingly as loss.

  Neal Ascherson

  Change, Educational, Pride

  Neal Ascherson (1988). “Games with Shadows”, Hudson Annex

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• The way that words mutate reminds me of fashions in music. The word--the note--is a constant. But the setting and chord in which it occurs alters with the mood of a nation from major to minor, from the assertive to the mournful and foreboding.

  Neal Ascherson

  Fashion, Way, Mood

  Neal Ascherson (1988). “Games with Shadows”, Hudson Annex

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• There is no doubt about it that it is more difficult for a woman to follow a career than for a man. Through the centuries his time has been considered more valuable, and he has consequently been excused from wrestling with many of 'life's minor damnabilities.

  Alice Hegan Rice

  Wrestling, Men, Careers

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• How easy it is for generous sentiments, high courtesy, and chivalrous courage to lose their influence beneath the chilling blight of selfishness, and to exhibit to the world a man who was great in all the minor attributes of character, but who was found wanting when it became necessary to prove how much principle is superior to policy.

  James F. Cooper

  Character, Men, Selfishness

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