She likes herself, yet others hates, For that which in herself she prizes; And while she laughs at them, forgets She is the thing that she despises.
William CongreveRead
Music has charms to sooth a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Music has the power to calm and transform even the most difficult emotions and situations.
This quote suggests that music possesses a unique ability to soothe our deepest emotions and alter our perceptions of the world around us. It implies that music can soften rigid or harsh feelings, much like it can affect physical substances, making it a profound art form that resonates with the human experience.
Themes
MusicSootheEmotionTransformationArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the power of the arts, one might say, 'As William Congreve noted, music has charms to soothe a savage breast.'
More from William Congreve
All quotes βWomen are like tricks by sleight of hand, Which, to admire, we should not understand
William CongreveRead
But say what you will, 'tis better to be left than never to have been loved. To pass our youth in dull indifference, to refuse the sweets of life because they once must leave us, is as preposterous as to wish to have been born old, because we one day must be old.
William CongreveRead
Grief walks upon the heels of pleasure; married in haste, we repent at leisure.
William CongreveRead
There is in true beauty, as in courage, something which narrow souls cannot dare to admire.
William CongreveRead
Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing.
William CongreveRead
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Fiction is not imagination. It is what anticipates imagination by giving it the form of reality. This is quite opposite to our own natural tendency which is to anticipate reality by imagining it, or to flee from it by idealizing it. That is why we [Europeans] shall never inhabit true fiction; we are condemned to the imaginary and nostalgia for the future.
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You could say that it's in talking movies that inner life begins to appear. You can see things happen to the faces of people that were neither planned nor rehearsed.
Mike NicholsRead