Fine music without devotion is but a splendid garment upon a corpse.
Interpretation
Music requires emotional engagement to have true value; without devotion, it is meaningless.
In this quote, Charles Spurgeon emphasizes the importance of emotional engagement and devotion in music. While music may possess beauty and skill, devoid of genuine passion and dedication, it loses its significance, rendering it akin to mere decoration on something lifeless. This metaphor highlights that true art comes to life only when infused with heartfelt commitment.
In practice
In a speech about the significance of the arts at a community event.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
I was this young boy and I saw this man with his hands round my sister's neck, I was just standing there with her two children beside me... Everything I've done since then was for the purpose of making women look stronger, not naïve. And so, when everyone started saying I was a misogynist, that really freaked me out. They didn't know me. They didn't know what I had seen in my life. That was the first part of fashion that I hated - people labeling me without knowing me.
We Orientals find beauty not only in the thing itself but in the pattern of the shadows, the light and darkness which that thing provides.
That's the magic of art and the magic of theatre: it has the power to transform an audience, an individual, or en masse, to transform them and give them an epiphanal experience that changes their life, opens their hearts and their minds and the way they think.
Writing has certainly helped me explore about 20,000 versions of my authentic self. I suppose that's what most writers discover if they write long enough: there are a lot of selves roaming around in there.
Paris was a universe whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and fashioned by history; so she seemed in this age of Napoleon III with her towering buildings, her massive cathedrals, her grand boulevards and ancient winding medieval streets - as vast and indestructible as nature itself.
Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.
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