Quotes & Sayings About Accompaniment

Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America. — Ken Burns

It is only when we are very happy that we can bear to gaze merrily upon the vast and limitless expanse of water, rolling on and on with such persistent, irritating monotony, to the accompaniment of our thoughts, whether grave or gay. — Baroness Orczy

The feeling of not being understood and of not understanding the world is no mere accompaniment of first passion, but its sole non-accidental cause. And the passion itself is a panic-stricken flight in which being together with the other means only a doubled solitude. — Robert Musil

Do you know anything about silent films?"
"Sure," I said. "The first ones were developed in the late nineteenth century and sometimes had live musical accompaniment, though it wasn't until the 1920s that sound became truly incorporated into films, eventually making silent ones obsolete in cinema. — Richelle Mead

In poetic language, in which the sign as such takes on an autonomous value, this sound symbolism becomes an actual factor and creates a sort of accompaniment to the signified. — Roman Jakobson

She was capable of crossing her own backyard without accompaniment, but she nodded, and he gently cupped her elbow as they moved over the brittle grass together. He tempered his stride to match hers, and a spiral of loneliness rose from her center. Walking with Arthur, shielded from the wind by his larger frame, his hand warm and protective on her arm, made her long for a partner with whom to share her life.
Warren's schedule of coming, and going had built within her an independent spirit, but if also left a part of her empty and wanting. Would she someday marry again, this time to a man who would walk beside her daily, bolster her, protect her, provide for her, and be honest with her?
Please, God. The prayer formed without effort and brought a desire to cry. — Kim Vogel Sawyer

Dilly Onion Rings This is Ellie Kuehn's recipe. She tried serving it on a sausage pizza out at Bertanelli's and it was really good! One large mild or sweet onion (a red onion is nice - more colorful) 1/3 cup white (granulated) sugar 2 teaspoons salt 1 teaspoon fresh baby dill (it's not as good with dried dill weed) ½ cup white vinegar ¼ cup water 4 large ripe tomatoes as an accompaniment (optional) Cut the onion in thin slices. Separate the slices into rings and put them in a bowl. Combine the sugar, salt, dill, white vinegar, and water. Pour the liquid over the onion rings. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least 5 hours, stirring every hour or so. Serving suggestions: Slice large ripe tomatoes and arrange on a platter. Lift the onion rings out of the brine and sprinkle them on top of the tomato slices. Garnish with fresh, chopped — Joanne Fluke

In going to America one learns that poverty is not a necessary accompaniment to civilization. — Oscar Wilde

At any age we must cherish illusions, consolatory or merely pleasant; in youth, they are omnipresent; in old age we must search for them, or even invent them. But with all that, boredom is their natural and inevitable accompaniment. — Lord Chesterfield

Jesus doesn't come asking if He can hang out with us. He commands us to follow Him. He has total authority and will settle for nothing less; He won't settle for being an accessory, an add- on, or a peaceful accompaniment to a nice life. No, He will rule and He will meddle. — Justin Buzzard

It was the talk that mattered supremely: the impassioned exchange of talk. Love was only a minor accompaniment. — D.H. Lawrence

Nowhere can I think so happily as in a train. I am not inspired; nothing so uncomfortable as that. I am never seized with a sudden idea for a masterpiece, nor form a sudden plan for some new enterprise. My thoughts are just pleasantly reflective. I think of all the good deeds I have done, and (when these give out) of all the good deeds I am going to do. I look out of the window and say lazily to myself, "How jolly to live there"; and a little farther on, "How jolly not to live there." I see a cow, and I wonder what it is like to be a cow, and I wonder whether the cow wonders what it is to be like me; and perhaps, by this time, we have passed on to a sheep, and I wonder if it is more fun being a sheep. My mind wanders on in a way which would annoy Pelman a good deal, but it wanders on quite happily, and the "clankety-clank" of the train adds a very soothing accompaniment. So soothing, indeed, that at any moment I can close my eyes and pass into a pleasant state of sleep. — A.A. Milne

Years an anomaly. Not only is the terrain of Buck more suited to hound-hunting, but also hounds are more suited to the larger game that is usually the prey of mounted hunters. A lively pack of hounds, boiling and baying, is a fine accompaniment for a royal hunt. The cat, when it is employed, is usually — Robin Hobb

When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable crop. It was no longer beans that I hoed, nor I that hoed beans; and I remembered with as much pity as pride, if I remembered at all, my acquaintances who had gone to the city to attend the oratorios. — Henry David Thoreau

The women went berserk, to the accompaniment of 'When a Man Loves a Woman.' It was all bass and drums; the musical equivalent, Anna decided, of cheap aftershave. — Sue Margolis

The bedroom door, still ajar since Matthew's exit, swung open as the banished Labrador, Rowntree, came waddling into the bedroom. He reported to Robin for an absent-minded rub of his ears, then flopped down beside the bed. His tail bumped against the floor for a while and then he fell wheezily asleep. To the accompaniment of his snuffling snores, Robin continued to comb the message boards. — Robert Galbraith

One time I went to Vancouver to talk to the students there, and they had a party with a real hot rock-type band playing down in the basement. The band was very nice: they had an extra cowbell lying around, and they encouraged me to play it. So I started to play a little bit, and since their music was very rhythmic (and the cowbell is just an accompaniment - you can't screw it up) I really got hot. After the party was over, the guy who organized the party told me that the bandleader said, "Geez! Who was that guy who came down and played on the cowbell! He can really knock out a rhythm on that thing! And by the way, that big shot this party was supposed to be for - you know, he never came down here; I never did see who it was! — Richard Feynman

intended to repel Evil, which are the constant Accompaniment to their Conversations with myself. — Diana Gabaldon

Covering up, so far as I can see, is often the accompaniment to far more truly shameful behaviour than stripping off. — Julie Burchill

All of the silent films had live music accompaniment, so it's actually a very rich period in music. — Howard Shore

If an instrument similar to a geiger-counter could be invented that counted moral judgements instead, we would learn to duck as people became increasingly 'moral', since lethal force is usually imminent. So far from moral fervour being an alternative to force, it is frequently the overture, the accompaniment and the memorial to it. — Charles Hampden-Turner

The city is like poetry; it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines. — E.B. White

France is a pretty stable democracy, but incidents occur. And I was pleased to have police accompaniment. — James Douglas

I love this medieval stuff," Archie announced to whatever assembly was there, "don't you?" And with that, he slapped her happily on the rump - to the accompaniment of more horrified gasps - and continued on his way. — Lynn Kurland

I'm trying to learn that in my Christian walk as well. If I'll move to the beat of the Spirit and relinquish control of my life to Him, I'll be able to dance to the music God has playing in His head rather than movin' and agroovin' to the catchy little tunes I've got going in my own. For when I allow the Lord to provide the accompaniment to my life, I discover a richly layered soundtrack more beautiful than anything I could compose myself. But following God's beat, dancing to His rhythm, trusting in His sovereignty - all that can be hard for a rhythmically challenged, control-loving person like me. Because when it comes right down to it, I'm a headstrong little girl who wants her own way in pretty much every area of life. Fortunately, I have a Father who loves me in spite of that. But while He loves me as I am, He also loves me too much to leave me that way. So He insists I follow His lead in order to "grow up" in my salvation (1 Peter 2:2). Becoming more like Jesus and less like me. — Joanna Weaver

The world wept a silent, windless downpour, a befitting accompaniment to the arrival of death.
However, Lady Brenna Hilliard, only daughter of the late Earl Lundsford, had yet to join in the weeping. Shock and disbelief kept her from the comfort of tears. The torrent would come, she knew, in a wave of sudden grief, but for now her emotions were elusive, too numb to be felt. — Cynthia Wicklund

Weir heard something different in the sounds. Once, during a period of calm, he sat on the firestep waiting for Stephen to return from an inspection and listened to the music of the tins. The empty ones were sonorous, the fuller ones provided an ascending scale. Those filled to the brim produced only a fat percussive beat unless they overbalanced, when the cascade would give a loud variation. Within earshot there were scores of tins in different states of fullness and with varying resonance. Then he heard the wire moving in the wind. It set up a moaning background noise that would occasionally gust into prominence, then lapse again to mere accompaniment. He had to work hard to discern, or perhaps imagine, a melody in this tin music, but it was better in his ears than the awful sound of shellfire. — Sebastian Faulks

My aunt is the director of the acapella group Black Voices. I was so struck by them as a child. They sang with such passion and conviction. By the time I turned 15, I had plucked up the courage to ask if I could join the group. Acapella is a different discipline from singing with an accompaniment - it is much more exposed. — Laura Mvula

Remember that [scientific thought] is the guide of action; that the truth which it arrives at is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we may act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself. — William Kingdon Clifford

A juicy chicken breast can be the perfect accompaniment to a classic Caesar salad or a club sandwich. It's also easy to cook, and can be as simple as dressing it with a few spices and popping in the oven. — Marcus Samuelsson

Money is misunderstood. The fact is if you want to be successful - the money will follow you. If you are a doctor, something else will follow you. If you are successful, there is an accompaniment. If your goal is just to make money, you won't succeed. Money is a commodity to use, not to be dictated by. — Frank Lowy

Every inch of skin removed to the accompaniment of exquisite pain," added the prisoner, helpfully. Rincewind paused. He thought he knew the meaning of the word "exquisite," and it didn't seem to belong anywhere near "pain. — Terry Pratchett

Under the current system, all children under 17 are treated equally. However, while some films may be appropriate for older children to see with parental accompaniment, some are inappropriate for younger children under any circumstances. This problem needs to be addressed. — Rob Reiner

Most of the people in the upper income brackets are not rich and do not have wealth sheltered offshore. They are typically working people who have finally reached their peak earning years after many years of far more modest incomes-and now see much of what they have worked for siphoned off by politicians, to the accompaniment of lofty rhetoric. — Thomas Sowell

I've always been a follower of silent movies. I see film as a visual medium with a musical accompaniment, and dialogue is a raft that goes on with it. — George Lucas

This mournful and restless sound was a fit accompaniment to my meditations. — Joseph Conrad

I always find a nice cup of tea and a few biscuits an excellent accompaniment to writing. — Claire H. Perkins

Sometimes when I run, I listen to jazz, but usually it's rock, since its beat is the best accompaniment to the rhythm of running. — Haruki Murakami

Nothing is arbitrary, nothing is insulated in beauty. It depends forever on the necessary and the useful. The plumage of the bird, the mimic plumage of the insect, has a reason for its rich colors in the constitution of the animal. Fitness is so inseparable an accompaniment of beauty, that it, has been taken for it. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Gothic lines grimmer; the soft brilliance of the altar, with its multitude of candles, with the priests performing actions whose meaning was unknown to him; the silent crowd that seemed not to participate but to wait anxiously like a crowd at a station barrier waiting for the gate to open; the stench of wet clothes and the aromatic perfume of incense; the bitter cold that lowered like a threatening unseen presence; it was not a religious emotion that he got from all this, but the sense of a mystery that had its roots far back in the origins of the human race. His nerves were taut, and when on a sudden the choir to the full accompaniment of the orchestra burst with a great shout into the Adeste Fideles he was seized with an exultation over he knew not what. — W. Somerset Maugham

Sauces comprise the honor and glory of French cookery. They have contributed to its superiority, or pre-eminence, which is disputed by none. Sauces are the orchestration and accompaniment of a fine meal, and enable a good chef or cook to demonstrate his talent. — Curnonsky

Printed prose is historically a most peculiar, almost an aberrant way of telling stories, and by far the most inherently anesthetic: It is the only medium of art I can think of which appeals directly to none of our five senses. The oral and folk tradition in narrative made use of verse or live-voice dynamics, embellished by gesture and expression
a kind of rudimentary theater
as do the best raconteurs of all times. Commonly there was musical accompaniment as well: a kind of one-man theater-of-mixed-means. — John Barth

I could not believe this. I was going to be hacked to shreds to the accompaniment of applause. — Kim Harrison

The Greatest Generation?
They tell me I am a member of the greatest generation. That's because I saw combat duty as a bombardier in World War 11. But I refuse to celebrate "the greatest generation" because in so doing we are celebrating courage and sacrifice in the cause of war. And we are miseducating the young to believe that military heroism is the noblest form of heroism, when it should be remembered only as the tragic accompaniment of horrendous policies driven by power and profit. The current infatuation with World War 11 prepares us
innocently on the part of some, deliberately on the part of others
for more war, more military adventures, more attempts to emulate the military heroes of the past. — Howard Zinn

He lighted the candles, for it was now dark, made the tea, and supplied the friend with whom he had been playing golf (for I believe the authorities of the University I write of indulge in that pursuit by way of relaxation); and tea was taken to the accompaniment of a discussion which golfing persons can imagine for themselves, but which the conscientious writer has no right to inflict upon any non-golfing persons. — M.R. James

Is the beauty of the Whole really enhanced by our agony? And is the Whole really beautiful? And what is beauty? Throughout all his existence man has been striving to hear the music of the spheres, and has seemed to himself once and again to catch some phrase of it, or even a hint of the whole form of it. Yet he can never be sure that he has truly heard it, nor even that there is any such perfect music at all to be heard. Inevitably so, for if it exists, it is not for him in his littleness. But one thing is certain. Man himself, at the very least, is music, a brave theme that makes music also of its vast accompaniment, its matrix of storms and stars. Man himself in his degree is eternally a beauty in the eternal form of things. It is very good to have been man. And so we may go forward together with laughter in our hearts, and peace, thankful for the past, and for our own courage. For we shall make after all a fair conclusion to this brief music that is man. — Olaf Stapledon

As he spoke, the wind whistled through the gaps in his teeth, creating an odd musical accompaniment to his words. -- unpublished as of Jan 11 2016, but surely due to appear in one of my works eventually. — Kira Stone

Soon the earth will tilt on its axis and begin to dance to the reggae beat to the accompaniment of earthquake. And who can resist the dance of the earthquake, mon? — Peter Tosh

I never fancied cats much till I found the First Mate," he remarked, to the accompaniment of the Mate's tremendous purrs. "I saved his life, and when you've saved a creature's life you're bound to love it. It's next thing to giving life. — L.M. Montgomery

The sound of distant breakers made her heart ache with melancholy. She was in the mood when the sea has a saddening effect upon the nerves. It is only when we are very happy that we can bear to gaze merrily upon the vast and limitless expanse of water, rolling on and on with such persistent, irritating monotony to the accompaniment of our thoughts, whether grave or gay. When they are gay, the waves echo their gaiety; but when they are sad, then every breaker, as it rolls, seems to bring additional sadness and to speak to us of hopelessness and of the pettiness of all our joys. — Emmuska Orczy

In your working conditions avoid everyday mediocrity. Semi-relaxation, to a background of insipid sounds, is degrading. On the other hand, accompaniment by an etude or a cacophony of voices can become as significant for work as the perceptible silence of the night. If the latter sharpens the inner ear, the former acts as a touchstone for a diction ample enough to bury even the most wayward sounds. — Walter Benjamin

[Warfare is] maleness in its absurdest extremes. Here is to be studied the whole gamut of basic masculinity, from the initial instinct of combat, through every form of glorious ostentation, with the loudest accompaniment of noise. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

In order to actually have a touchscreen in front of me and somehow still be connected to nature, I needed to be able to incorporate natural elements into the song structures. Because that's always been my song-writing accompaniment: nature. — Bjork

The least step forward in the domain of free thought and individual life has been achieved in all ages to the accompaniment of physical and intellectual tortures: and not only the mere step forward, no! but every form of movement and change has rendered necessary innumerable martyrs, throughout the entire course of thousands of years which sought their paths and laid down their foundation-stones, years, however, which we do not think of when we speak about "world-history," that ridiculously small division of mankind's existence. And even in this so-called world-history, which in the main is merely a great deal of noise about the latest novelties, there is no more important theme than the old, old tragedy of the martyrs who tried to move the mire. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The so-called miraculous powers of a great master are a natural accompaniment to his exact understanding of subtle laws that operate in the inner cosmos of consciousness. — Paramahansa Yogananda

I often paint a detailed picture in my mind of what I would like the end of my life to look like. I think of saying goodbye to Clara and other people I love, then I picture an empty house, perhaps a large, rambling rural mansion somewhere near the marshes where I grew up; I imagine a bath upstairs, which I can fill with warm water; and I think of music playing all through this big house, Crescent, maybe, or Ascension, filling the spaces not taken up by my solitude, reaching me in the bath, so that when I slip across the one-way border, I do so to the accompaniment of modal harmonies heard from far away. — Teju Cole

Up again to the crest, and still no sight of land. Something that looked like clouds - or could it be ships? - far away on his left. Then, down, down, down - he thought he would never reach the end of it . . . this time he noticed how dim the light was. Such tepid revelry in water - such glorious bathing, as one would have called it on earth, suggested as its natural accompaniment a blazing sun. But here there was no such thing. The water gleamed, the sky burned with gold, but all was rich and dim, and his eyes fed upon it undazzled and unaching. The very names of green and gold, which he used perforce in describing the scene, are too harsh for the tenderness, the muted iridescence, of that warm, maternal, delicately gorgeous world. It was mild to look upon as evening, warm like summer noon, gentle and winning like early dawn. It was altogether pleasurable. He sighed. — C.S. Lewis

When a loved one disappears, you continue to live with the accompaniment of that person. One has to find a balance between joy and sorrow. — Philippe Petit

Since the gap between the rich countries and the poor can be removed, it will be. If we are shortsighted, inept, incapable either of good-will or enlightened self-interest, then it may be removed to the accompaniment of war and starvation: but removed it will be. The questions are, how, and by whom. — C.P. Snow

Generosity is the accompaniment of high birth; pity and gratitude are its attendants. — Pierre Corneille

He felt he was about to experience again some ancient, delicious childhood moment that the steam calliope's sour hollowness, the stitching hurdy-gurdy accompaniment, and the drum-and-cymbal crash brought almost to the margin of his grasp. — Patricia Highsmith

Country music was the most segregated kind of music in America, where even whites played jazz and even blacks sang in the opera. Something like country music was what lynch mobs must have enjoyed while stringing up their black victims. Country music was not necessarily lynching music, but no other music could be imagined as lynching's accompaniment. Beethoven's Ninth was the opus for Nazis, concentration camp commanders, and possibly President Truman as he contemplated atomizing Hiroshima, classical music the refined score for the high-minded extermination of brutish hordes. Country music was set to the more humble beat of the red-blooded, bloodthirsty American heartland. — Viet Thanh Nguyen

Pacuvius, who by long occupancy made Syria his own,8 used to hold a regular burial sacrifice in his own honour, with wine and the usual funeral feasting, and then would have himself carried from the dining-room to his chamber, while eunuchs applauded and sang in Greek to a musical accompaniment: He has lived his life, he has lived his life! — Seneca.

American Ballet Theatre's rehearsal studios are at 890 Broadway, an old building where exposed pipes clank and hiss in uneven accompaniment to piano music. The high ceilings wear a toupee of dust. The wall paint peels like a newbie ballerina's toes. — Sascha Radetsky

Mira, I'm about to be naked," Blue said as he whipped off his belt and tossed it on the floor. "So watch out. Well, in my underwear."
"I've seen you in your bathing suit," Mira said. "It's the same thing."
"It is not the same thing," Blue said. "When it's accompanied by seventies porn music, it's an X-rated strip show." Blue yanked off his shirt. "Freddie, you're kind of slow on the uptake. Eine kleine porn music, please."
Freddie scrunched his forehead in distaste. "I don't want to plug my guitar in just so I can play some bow-chicka-wow-wow accompaniment to your strip show.
Mira laughed. "Bow-chicka-what was that, Freddie? — Sarah Cross

Both lyrically and sonically, glam metal is the sensible accompaniment for removing one's pants for money. — Chuck Klosterman

They sang without instrumental accompaniment
or, more accurately in their case, without any interference. Their voices were melodious and unsentimental, almost to the point where a somewhat more denominational man than myself might, without straining, have experienced levitation. A couple of the very youngest children dragged the tempo a trifle, but in a way that only the composer's mother could have found fault with. — J.D. Salinger

...and the sound of her low voice seemed to have the accompaniment of all the other sounds, full of mystery, desolation, and sorrow, I had ever heard - the ripple of the river, the soughing of the trees swayed by the wind, the murmurs of the crowds, the faint ring of incomprehensible words cried from afar, the whisper of a voice speaking from beyond the threshhold of an eternal darkness. — Joseph Conrad

A major element in Lincoln's greatness was the way in which he could hold a strong moral position without the usual accompaniment of self-righteousness. — Elton Trueblood

I had always been singing, all of my life, but it wasn't until I got out of high school and was on my own that I didn't have any accompaniment. — Jason Mraz

First, liberals discover social and economic problems. Not a difficult task: the human race has always had such problems and will continue to, short of the Garden of Eden. Liberals, however, usually need scores of millions in foundation grants and taxpayer-financed commissions to come up with the startling revelations of disease, poverty, ignorance, homelessness, et al. Having identified "problems" to the accompaniment of much coordinated fanfare, the liberals proceed to invoke "solutions," to be supplied, of course, by the federal government, which we all know and love as the Great Problem-Solving Machine. — Anonymous

The Violins waltzed. The Cellos and Basses provided accompaniment. The Violas mourned their fate, while the Concertmaster showed off. The Flutes did bird imitations ... repeatedly, and the reed instruments had the good taste to admire my jacket. The Trumpets held a parade in honor of our great nation, while the French Horns waxed nostalgic about something or other. The Trombones had too much to drink. The Percussion beat the band, and the Tuba stayed home playing cards with his landlady, the Harp, taking sips of warm milk a blue little cup.
But the Composer is still dead. — Lemony Snicket

I have never been able to
meet anyone without an accompaniment of painful
smiles, the buffoonery of defeat. — Osamu Dazai

Red wine is a great accompaniment to meat. — Mario Lemieux

[Voltaire] theoretically prefers a republic, but he knows its flaws: it permits factions which, if they do not bring on civil war, at least destroy national unity; it is suited only to small states protected by geographic situation, and as yet unspoiled and untorn with wealth; in general "men are rarely worthy to govern themselves." Republics are transient at best; they are the first form of society, arising from the union of families; the American Indians lived in tribal republics, and Africa is full of such democracies. but differentiation of economic status puts an end to these egalitarian governments; and differentiation is the inevitable accompaniment of development. — Will Durant

When any person of really eminent virtue becomes the object of envy, the clamor and abuse by which he is assailed is but the sign and accompaniment of his success in doing service to the public. And if he is a truly wise man, he will take no more notice of it than the moon does of the howling of the dogs. Her only answer to them is to shine on. — Richard Whately

There is hardly an American male of my generation who has not at one time or another tried to master the victory cry of the great ape as it issued from the androgynous chest of Johnny Weissmuller, to the accompaniment of thousands of arms and legs snapping during attempts to swing from tree to tree in the backyards of the Republic. — Gore Vidal

The proliferation of bureaucrats and its invariable accompaniment, much heavier tax levies on the productive part of the population, are the recognizable signs, not of a great, but of a decaying society. Historians know that both phenomena were especially marked in the declining eras of the Roman Empire in the West and of its successor state, the Eastern or Byzantine Empire. — William Henry Chamberlin

Pious people in general seem to regard religion as a necessary accompaniment of life; to Wingfold it was life itself; with him religion must be all, or could be nothing. — George MacDonald

If you want to know whether you have written anything worth preserving, sing it to yourself without any accompaniment. — Joseph Haydn

To talk over a quarrel, with its inevitable accompaniment of self-justification, is too much like handling cobwebs to be very successful. — Margaret Deland

Swords, Lances, arrows, machine guns, and even high explosives have had far less power over the fates of nations than the typhus louse, the plague flea, and the yellow-fever mosquito. Civilizations have retreated from the plasmodium of malaria, and armies have crumbled into rabbles under the onslaught of cholera spirilla, or of dysentery and typhoid bacilli. Huge areas have bee devastated by the trypanosome that travels on the wings of the tsetse fly, and generations have been harassed by the syphilis of a courtier. War and conquest and that herd existence which is an accompaniment of what we call civilization have merely set the stage for these more powerful agents of human tragedy. — Hans Zinsser

Better a dish of husks to the accompaniment of a muted lute than to be satiated with stewed shark's fin and rich spiced wine of which the cost is frequently mentioned by the provider. — Ernest Bramah

True openness is the accompaniment of the desire to know, hence of the awareness of ignorance. To deny the possibility of knowing good and bad is to suppress true openness. — Allan Bloom

Among writers, if you don't have a therapist, it's like saying you don't keep a journal or use the thesaurus. It's a natural accompaniment. — Amy Tan

Heaven would be a comfy armchair ... .You'd get a great, private phonograph, and all of eternity to listen to your life's melody. You could isolate your one life out of the cacophonous galaxy - the a cappella version - or you could play it back with its accompaniment, embedded in the brass and strings of mothers, fathers, sisters, windfalls and failures, percussion cities of strangers. You could play it forward or backward, back and back, and listen to the future of your past. You could lift the needle at whim, defeating Time. — Karen Russell

If you wish, gentle reader, you may augment your mental tableau with dramatic orchestral accompaniment. — Marie Brennan

It is important for knitters to know two things about frogging: that cats are capable of this knitting action, and even seem to enjoy it and seek opportunities to do it; and that foul language is a normal, healthy accompaniment to frogging, whether it is you or the cat that accomplished the task. — Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Mediocre people have an answer for everything and are astonished at nothing. They always want to have the air of knowing better than you what you are going to tell them; when, in their turn, they begin to speak, they repeat to you with the greatest confidence, as if dealing with their own property, the things that they have heard you say yourself at some other place. A capable and superior look is the natural accompaniment of this type of character. — Eugene Delacroix

Perhaps, on the whole, embarrassment and perplexity are a kind of natural accompaniment to life and movement; and it is better to be driven out of your senses with thinking which of two things you ought to do than to do nothing whatever, and be utterly uninteresting to all the world. — Margaret Oliphant

The life even of a just man is a round of petty frauds; that of a knave a series of greater. We degrade life by our follies and vices, and then complain that the unhappiness which is only their accompaniment is inherent in the constitution of things. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Pleasures and pains must have been evolved as the subjective accompaniment of processes which are respectively beneficial or injurious to the organism, and so evolved the purpose or to the end that the organism should seek the one and shun the other. — George John Romanes

The viola and the clarinet made for an interesting pairing: we had to imagine the accompaniment of other instruments, ideally a violin and a cello. — Nicholas Christopher

The hymn being sung had been 'Morning Has Broken', with a discarded ambulant unit of Lobsang's playing the Rick Wakeman piano accompaniment, and pretty soulfully too. And — Terry Pratchett

It's an accompaniment to life. It's not something that I do to rap; I smoke when I open my eyes ... I don't know any other feeling. — Action Bronson

What a wonderful work Wagner has done for humanity in translating the toil of life into the readable script of music! For those who seek the tale of other worlds his magic is silent; but earth-travail under his wand becomes instinct with rhythmic song to an accompaniment of the elements, and the blare and crash of the bottomless pit itself. — Richard Wagner

I think it's of huge importance to us as worship leaders ... to ask ourselves these two questions: What were the words we put into our congregation's mouths, minds, and memories? And how well did our congregation sing? Our role is simply to be an accompaniment to them as they sing. — Keith Getty

The very first thing I saw at this year's Telluride Film Festival was sheer bliss. "Lava," a musical romance from Pixar Animation, was one of the shorts that traditionally precede almost every festival screening; the director was James Ford Murphy. The story, spanning millions of years in 7 minutes, starts with a lonely Hawaiian volcano who, crooning to ukulele accompaniment, yearns for "someone to lava. — Anonymous