Variation Quotes - Page 2

• If you look at music, you see theme, variation, you see symmetry, asymmetry, you see structure, and these are related to skills in the real world.

  Dave Van Ronk

  Real, Skills, Asymmetry

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• A rise of wages from this cause will, indeed, be invariably accompanied by a rise in the price of commodities; but in such cases, it will be found that labour and all commodities have not varied in regard to each other, and that the variation has been confined to money.

  David Ricardo

  Wages, Causes, Commodity

  David Ricardo (1821). “On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation”, p.47

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• I frequently compose out the entire metric structure of a piece in modified cyclic form, where each cyclic revolution undergoes some form of 'variation' much as if measure lengths were concrete musical 'material.'

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Gmos, Musical, Pieces

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• Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone - those that are now, and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river; the "what" is in constant flux, the "why" has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what's right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us - a chasm whose depths we cannot see.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Past, Rivers, Mind

  Marcus Aurelius (2002). “Meditations: A New Translation”, p.61, Modern Library

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• I still think I have the speed and the variations also to win the matches, but its very good competition and also a great challenge for me too.

  Martina Hingis

  Winning, Thinking, Competition

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• You only get to walk variations of the same lines everyone has already drawn for you.

  Courtney Summers

  Bullying, Lines, Bullied

  Courtney Summers (2013). “What Goes Around: Two Books In One: Cracked Up to Be & Some Girls Are”, p.186, Macmillan

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• Films have gotten leaner and leaner, cutting out all variations from the story line.

  Neil Jordan

  Cutting, Stories, Lines

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• The moment at which music reveals its true nature is contained in the ancient exercise of the theme with variations. The complete mystery of music is explained right there.

  Pierre Schaeffer

  Exercise, Mystery, Ancient

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• I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.

  Sylvia Plath

  Famous Inspirational, Book, Skills

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• Yet there are times when a deeper need enters, when we want the poem to be not only pleasurably right but compellingly wise, not only a surprising variation played upon the world, but a re-tuning of the world itself.

  Seamus Heaney

  Wise, Needs, World

  Seamus Heaney (2014). “Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996”, p.420, Macmillan

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• There are not many original shapes or silhouettes -- only a million variations.

  Charles James

  Shapes, Silhouettes, Originals

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• The soul has two parts, one rational and the other irrational. Let us now similarly divide the rational part, and let it be assumed that there are two rational faculties, one whereby we contemplate those things whose first principles are invariable, and one whereby we contemplate those things which admit of variation.

  Aristotle

  Two, Soul, Principles

  Aristotle (1996). “The Nicomachean Ethics”, p.145, Wordsworth Editions

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• I've fallen for one girl too many who's wanted some variation of who I am and only that. It eats you alive.

  Christopher Krovatin

  Girl, Who I Am, Alive

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• The variations I've composed on the graceful Neapolitan ditty, 'Oh Mamma, Mama Cara,' outshine everything. I can't describe it

  Niccolo Paganini

  Mama, Popularity, I Can

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• There are about a thousand different variations on a horse neigh. Some of them sound like a horse having sex, some of them like a horse having sad sex.

  Denis Leary

  Horse, Sex, Sound

  "Denis Leary Explains What's Funny About EMTs". Interview with Eric Spitznagel, www.esquire.com. March 19, 2014.

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• There are only five notes in the musical scale, but their variations are so many that they cannot all be heard. There are only five basic colors, but their variations are so many that they cannot all be seen. There are only five basic flavors, but their variations are so many that they cannot all be tasted. There are only two kinds of charge in battle, the unorthodox surprise attack and the orthodox direct attack, but variations of the unorthodox and the orthodox are endless. The unorthodox and the orthodox give rise to each other, like a beginningless circle-who could exhaust them?

  Sun Tzu

  Color, Circles, Two

  Sun Tzu (2005). “The Art of War”, p.98, Shambhala Publications

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• It at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed.

  Charles Darwin

  Economics, Destroyed

  "Darwin on Evolution: Words of Wisdom from the Father of Evolution".

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• Variation must be taken as random until there is positive evidence to the contrary.

  Harold Jeffreys

  Taken, Evidence, Contrary

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• To me, everything is endless variations on other things. Like waves in the ocean. They continue to turn over on each other, and they're all slightly different. I don't know if originality is possible. Is it even necessary? Because everything is different than what came before, but it's all branches from the same tree. Originality is overrated, but what you do with things is always different.

  Jim Jarmusch

  Ocean, Tree, Different

  Source: thequietus.com

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• It's bullshit to think of friendship and romance as being different. They're not. They're just variations of the same love. Variations of the same desire to be close.

  Rachel Cohn

  Love, Thinking, Bullshit

  "Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List". Book by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, August 26, 2008.

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• When you have finished analyzing all the variations and gone along all the branches of the tree of analysis you must first of all write the move down on your score sheet, before you play it.

  Alexander Kotov

  Moving, Writing, Play

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• There are endless new variations on how to hurt a woman physically, emotionally, financially, and socially.

  Gloria Allred

  Hurt, Endless

  "Gloria Allred's Fighting Spirit" by Leslie Bennetts, www.harpersbazaar.com. June 1, 2010.

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• Evolution, thus, is merely contingent on certain processes articulated by Darwin: variation and selection. No longer is a fixed object transformed, as in transformational evolution, but an entirely new start is, so to speak, made in every generation.

  Ernst Mayr

  Generations, New Start, Evolution

  "Toward a new philosophy of biology: observations of an evolutionist". Book by Ernst Mayr, p. 457, 1988.

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• Quantitative work shows clearly that natural selection is a reality, and that, among other things, it selects Mendelian genes, which are known to be distributed at random through wild populations, and to follow the laws of chance in their distribution to offspring. In other words, they are an agency producing variation of the kind which Darwin postulated as the raw material on which selection acts.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Reality, Agency, Law

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• In Darwin's theory, you just have to substitute 'mutations' for his 'slight accidental variations' (just as quantum theory substitutes 'quantum jump' for 'continuous transfer of energy'). In all other respects little change was necessary in Darwin's theory...

  Erwin Schrodinger

  Energy, Mutation, Littles

  "What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell". Book by Erwin Schrodinger, 1944.

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