Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
W. H. AudenRead
Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Music serves as a powerful medium for experiencing and understanding the passage of time.
In this quote, W. H. Auden suggests that music provides a unique way to perceive and process time. Through its rhythms, melodies, and themes, music captures moments and emotions, allowing us to reflect on our experiences and the flow of life in a profound way.
Themes
MusicTimeArtExperienceEmotion
In practice
Example use cases
A speaker at a conference on the role of music in society could use this quote to emphasize its impact on human experience.
More from W. H. Auden
All quotes βThat the speech of self-disclosure should be translatable seems to me very odd, but I am convinced that it is. The conclusion that I draw is that the only quality which all human being without exception possess is uniqueness: any characteristic, on the other hand, which one individual can be recognized as having in common with another, like red hair or the English language, implies the existence of other individual qualities which this classification excludes.
W. H. AudenRead
Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do; it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire; it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire.
W. H. AudenRead
History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
W. H. AudenRead
'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
W. H. AudenRead
Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.
W. H. AudenRead
Similar quotes
So many new things have been discovered in the 20th century that now, at the end of the century, we need some kind of synthesis, some musical language which will allow us just to write music.
Krzysztof PendereckiRead
It is not architectural achievement that makes the structures of earlier times seem to us so full of significance but the circumstance that antique temples, Roman basilicas, and even the cathedrals of the Middle Ages are not the works of single personalities but creations of entire epochs.
Ludwig Mies Van Der RoheRead
For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.
Vincent Van GoghRead
The state of female artists is very good. But the very definition of art has been biased in that 'art' was what men did in a European tradition and 'crafts' were what women and natives did. But it's actually all the same.
Gloria SteinemRead
There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.
John FowlesRead
Without this spirit, Modernist architecture cannot fully exist. Since there is often a mismatch between the logic and the spirit of Modernism, I use architecture to reconcile the two.
Tadao AndoRead