Flute Quotes & Sayings

I do not consider my self as having mastered the flute, but I get a real kick out of trying. — James Galway

It was the eldritch scurrying of those fiend-born rats, always questing for new horrors, and determined to lead me on even unto those grinning caverns of earth's centre where Nyarlathotep, the mad faceless god, howls blindly in the darkness to the piping of two amorphous idiot flute-players. — H.P. Lovecraft

Now we see again, under the blue heavens where the larks are singing in the hot April sky, why the Romans called the Etruscans vicious. Even in their palmy days the Romans were not exactly saints. But they thought they ought to be. They hated the phallus and the ark, because they wanted empire and dominion and, above all, riches: social gain. You cannot dance gaily to the double flute and at the same time conquer nations or rake in large sums of money. Delenda est Carthago. To the greedy man, everybody that is in the way of its greed is vice incarnate. — D.H. Lawrence

I played the vina until my heart turned into the same instrument. Then I offered this instrument to the Divine Musician, the only muscian existing. Since then I have become His flute, and when He chooses He plays His music. The people give me credit for this music which, in reality, is not due to me, but to the Musician who plays his own instrument. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

I closed my eyes during a flute solo, wishing I could wrap the silvery sound around me like armor. — Jodi Meadows

I carry my flute around everywhere I go and pull it out. It actually becomes a panacea for me, for things that go on around me. It really gives me relief and calmness, tranquility. — Hubert Laws

When I talk of primordial innocence, I hear it in Sufi music with the nay flute. I see it in Coptic icons, in most traditional art, particularly art of the American Indian. I find the texts extraordinarily beautiful and very childlike and very simple. I've been particularly interested in American Indian texts. — John Tavener

Eyes see only dust and earth, but feel with the heart, and know pure joy.
The delights blossom on all sides in every form, but where is your heart's thread to make a wreath of them?
My master's flute sounds through all things, drawing me out of my lodgings wherever they may be, and while I listen I know that every step I take is in my master's house.
For he is the sea, he is the river that leads to the sea, and he is the landing-place. — Rabindranath Tagore

Everything I said he agreed with, which was trying, and his flute playing would make the deaf wince, but I think the real problem with Hyacinth was that he reminded me of myself. He read poetry. He flinched at loud noises. In addition to having no musical skills, he had no martial skills. He avoided any situation that might require physical effort on his part. Seeing him, I found it no wonder that my father despised me. — Megan Whalen Turner

To blow is not to play on the flute; you must move the fingers.
[Ger., Blasen ist nicht floten, ihr musst die Finger bewegen.] — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The Woodstock dove on the iconic poster is really a catbird. And it was originally perched on a flute. — Shawn Amos

I AM RESTLESS
AM restless. I am athirst for far-away things.
My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance.
O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute!
I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore.
I am eager and wakeful, I am a stranger in a strange land.
Thy breath comes to me whispering an impossible hope.
Thy tongue is known to my heart as its very own.
O Far-to-seek, O the keen call of thy flute!
I forget, I ever forget, that I know not the way, that I have not the winged horse.
I am listless, I am a wanderer in my heart.
In the sunny haze of the languid hours, what vast vision of thine takes shape in the blue of the sky!
O Farthest end, O the keen call of thy flute!
I forget, I ever forget, that the gates are shut everywhere in the house where I dwell alone! — Rabindranath Tagore

When you play the oboe, the flute or other wind instruments, there is something between you and the breath; there is the embouchure, the reed, etc. But with the recorder, I receive an immediate response from the instrument. This is something that attracted me to the instrument, that I could immediately feel the response of what I was doing. — Michala Petri

The heart-flute Knows how to charm the world. — Sri Chinmoy

The Band advances to the cadence of the flute, and has no call for retreat. Its code is Stand and Die. — Steven Pressfield

Harry ran upstairs to their dark dormitory. He pulled out the cloak and then his eyes fell on the flute Hagrid had given him for Christmas. He pocketed it to use on Fluffy - he didn't feel much like singing. — J.K. Rowling

Shy Gifts
Shy gifts that come to us from a world that may not
even know we're here. Windfalls, scantlings.
Breaking a bough like breathy flute-notes, a row
of puffed white almond-blossom, the word in hiding
among newsprint that has other news to tell.
In a packed aisle at the supermarket, I catch
the eye of a wordless one-year-old, whale-blue,
unblinking. It looks right through me, recognising
what? Wisely mistrustful but unwisely
impulsive as we are, we take these givings
as ours and meant for us - why else so leap
to receive them? - and go home lighter
of step to the table set, the bed turned down, the book
laid open under the desk-lamp, pages astream
with light like angels' wings, arched for take-off. — David Malouf

You take the pen, and the lines dance. You take the flute and the notes shimmer. You take the brush, and the colors sing. So all things have meaning and beauty in that space beyond time where you are. How, then, can I hold back anything from you? — Dag Hammarskjold

Debatable how long the seduction took. The smarter the girl, the swifter these things go. Physical forwardness as intellectual high-wire act: the pleasure not of pleasure but of performance and revenge against the retainer, the flute, the stack of expectations. — Lauren Groff

While they were preparing the hemlock, Socrates was learning how to play a new tune on the flute. "What will be the use of that?" he was asked. "To know this tune before dying." If I dare repeat this reply long since trivialized by the handbooks, it is because it seems to me the sole serious justification of any desire to know, whether exercised on the brink of death or at any other moment of existence. — Emil Cioran

Sometimes the break in your heart is like the hole in the flute. Sometimes it's the place where the music comes through. — Andrea Gibson

Ginger: You know what the greatest tragedy is in the whole world? ... It's all the people who never find out what it is they really want to do or what it is they're really good at. It's all the sons who become blacksmiths because their fathers were blacksmiths. It's all the people who could be really fantastic flute players who grow old and die without ever seeing a musical instrument, so they become bad plowmen instead. It's all the people with talents who never even find out. Maybe they are never even born in a time when it's even possible to find out. It's all the people who never get to know what it is that they can really be. It's all the wasted chances. — Terry Pratchett

Basically, I like to pick up my flute, which is a pretty instrument, and play pretty on it. — Paul Horn

Writing in the electronic world, you imagine a sound, and then you have to go and find it. It's not like imagining a flute and then making that sound materialize. That's easy! — Christopher Young

Hallelujah! Praise God in his holy house of worship, praise him under the open skies; Praise him for his acts of power, praise him for his magnificent greatness; Praise with a blast on the trumpet, praise by strumming soft strings; Praise him with castanets and dance, praise him with banjo and flute; Praise him with cymbals and a big bass drum, praise him with fiddles and mandolin. Let every living, breathing creature praise GOD! — Eugene H. Peterson

They are all different and I find it hard to tell what flute suits me best. — James Galway

Everyone who plays the flute should learn singing. — James Galway

QUINCE
Francis Flute, the bellows-mender.
FLUTE
Here, Peter Quince.
QUINCE
Flute, you must take Thisby on you.
FLUTE
What is Thisby? a wandering knight?
QUINCE
It is the lady that Pyramus must love.
FLUTE
Nay, faith, let me not play a woman; I have a beard coming. — William Shakespeare

She said surprisingly, in a voice as thin as a flute:
"Are you a good man?"
"I like to think so," but her candor stopped me. "No," I said, "I'm not. I keep trying, when I remember to, but it keeps getting tougher every year. Like trying to chin yourself with one hand. You can practice off and on all your life, and never make it. — Ross Macdonald

The flute is not an instrument that has a good moral effect - it is too exciting. — Plato

You got to play the flute as a flute, like that. You can't play like a tenor concept on soprano; it sounds wrong. But some guys do it, and they think it's O.K., but not so! — Jerome Richardson

Jesper: "If Pekka Rollins kills us all, I'm going to get Wylan's ghost to teach my ghost how to play the flute just so that I can annoy the hell out of your ghost."
Kaz: "I'll just hire Matthias' ghost to kick your ghost's ass."
Matthias: "My ghost won't associate with your ghost. — Leigh Bardugo

The best friend a man can have is reading and writing, and the bad ones to avoid are Go and chess and flute and pipe. — Hojo Soun

While the long history of religious oppression and hypocrisy is profoundly sobering, the earnest seeker must look beyond the behavior of flawed humans in order to find the truth. Would you condemn an oak tree because its timbers had been used to build battering rams? Would you blame the air for allowing lies to be transmitted through it? Would you judge Mozart's The Magic Flute on the basis of a poorly rehearsed performance by fifth-graders? If you had never seen a real sunset over the Pacific, would you allow a tourist brochure as a substitute? Would you evaluate the power of romantic love solely in the light of an abusive marriage next door? No. A real evaluation of the truth of faith depends upon looking at the clean, pure water, not at the rusty containers. — Francis S. Collins

I turned to look into his face one last time. It was as if I could see the whole universe in his eyes. Maybe he was God, maybe he was simply enlightened. I didn't care right then, in that blessed moment, I just loved him. Later, though, the love was to turn to hate, to fear. They seemed so opposite, the feelings, yet they were all one note on his flute. — Christopher Pike

Playing a flute is like writing a book. You're telling what's in your heart ... It's easier to play if it's right from your heart. You get the tone, and the fingers will follow. — Eddie Cahill

On the drive home, I started playing my new flute. Mom never lets me play in the car because she's afraid someone might crash into us and my flute will impale me into the seat. I find that ridiculous, because how could that even happen? — Maria Semple

There is an old lady who lives on the moon. You can see her spinning thread on her spinning wheel. Her isolation and distance from the world has made her a sage. She weaves stories. She knows every wanderer who crosses the sea grass meadows, she knows every woman who uses her blackened blue hands to grind grain in the hand mill, she is friends with the little girl who got lost in the corn fields and was never found, and she knows the story of the boy who played flute on the little hill when his lambs slept. Grandmother said that if I had been a good girl the moon lady would weave for me a magical blanket and every stitch will be made from a moment of my life, a forgotten moment, a memory. Every stitch would be special. It would be made especially for me. — Kanza Javed

The beauty of the flute was in its simplicity, in its resemblance to the human voice. It always sounded clear. It sounded alone. The piano, on the other hand, was a network of parts - a ship, with its strings like rigging, its case a hull, its lifted lid a sail. Kestrel always thought that the piano didn't sound like a single instrument but a twinned one, with its low and high halves merging together or pulling apart. — Marie Rutkoski

There's all sorts of things I was always meaning to get around to - learning to play the flute, calculating the square root of nought, going mad - but I just didn't have the time. — Tom Holt

The only good political movement I've seen lately was Occupy Wall Street. They had no leaders, which was genius. But unfortunately it always ends up with some hippy playing a flute. — John Lydon

Be empty
and weep with the fullness of the reed flute.
Be empty
and discover the mysteries of the reed pen. — Jalaluddin Rumi

A flute without holes, is not a flute. A donut without a hole, is a Danish. — Chevy Chase

We [Raymond and Meursault] stared at each other without blinking, and everything came to a stop there between the sea, the sand, and the sun, and the double silence of the flute and the water. It was then that I realized that you could either shoot or not shoot. — Albert Camus

Rush like a river from the highest mountain, drink from the fountain and stop your counting. What kind of wine does he have in his tavern, oh so enchanted and sing like a mad man. Mad with the love of a wife for her husband, child or mother, sister or brother ... sing for the Most High, sing for no other. We are all notes in this eternal song, God plays his flute and we all dance along. — Trevor Hall

There was a sound of steel meeting steel. Devin flung a desperate look over his shoulder, saw Hewet fending off two men behind him, and looked ahead in time to see ten men in light armor ride out of the trees up ahead and drive straight for him. He almost swallowed the flute.

He threw an arm over his face, too shocked to be terrified, and waited to die. — Amy Bai

Playing flute was the one thing I knew could make people see a human, not a monster. — Rachel Hartman

I was not a great guitarist, so I sold my 1960 Fender Stratocaster in exchange for a Shure Microphone, made in Chicago, and a flute. — Ian Anderson

The soft complaining flute, In dying notes, discovers The woes of hopeless lovers. — John Dryden

The duke's son and the pauper girl. I suppose as a couple we were the most interesting thing in view.
I took the champagne glass from Armand and finished what he hadn't. As Sophia had said, it wasn't swill.
So much for my manners.
"Why am I here?" I asked curtly, handing back the empty flute.
"Because I invited you."
I dropped my voice. "Did you find out anything about Rue?"
"Is that why you came?"
"No, I came because I simply can't get enough of people looking down their noses at me. The girls at school are getting frightfully lax about it."
"Are they? How remiss of them. We're taught from the cradle how to look down our noses, you know, we rich sons of bitches. Perhaps Westcliffe's curriculum is a tad too liberal these days."
"Why, yes, my lord," I said very audibly. "I would enjoy seeing the rest of the boat."
"The yacht."
"That, yes. — Shana Abe

I picked up my flute and smiled, eyebrows dancing. "Why don't you show her your straight dance?"
"Is there a gay dance, too?" Mickey asked. — Rose Christo

Danzon is my favorite Cuban music, played by a traditional string orchestra with flute and piano. It's very formally structured but romantic music, which derives from the French-Haitian contradance. — Rachel Kushner

I am the hole on the flute that Gods breath flows through. — Eckhart Tolle

Ours was a very progressive Protestant family, but my parents were God-loving rather than God-fearing. We went to church, and I still go with my mum and dad when I return home - it's a family thing. I played flute in my dad's marching band, but I had an integrated upbringing. We had a lot of Catholic friends. — James Nesbitt

We are as the flute, and the music in us is from thee; we are as the mountain and the echo in us is from thee. — Rumi

When I was signing up for the University of Southern California's music program, I flipped a coin to decide my major. If it came up heads, it would be flute - tails would be voice. — Sondra Radvanovsky

Once upon a time there was a girl who discovered that if she played a certain tune on a jade flute, she could summon up jade gnomes, a peculiar, harmless, but rather creepy looking spirit of the underground. The fact is that many of us have talents like this, but generally never discover them due to lack of opportunity, since one can go one's entire life without playing a jade flute, or discovering that one can speak the language of ground sloths, or turning fruitcake into solid tungsten by singing Sinatra tunes to it under a quarter moon. — Ursula Vernon

How long did they stay there in that room, on the narrow bed? She had a scar on her shoulder, in the shape of a star, that Louis couldn't help but run his lips over. A souvenir of a fall from a horse. It got dark. They could hear the clattering of hooves, a whinny, and the high-pitched voice of the marquis giving orders at more and more distant intervals, like a motif on a flute, clear and desolate, returning again and again. — Patrick Modiano

I forget what the official name of it was, but they did an all-day of roots music - every kind of music you can imagine from around the country - New Orleans Jazz to Indian flute players, R&B, you name it. I met and became good friends with (blues guitar player) Joe Louis Walker. He was on the show. — Scotty Moore

I'll always be happy if they'd leave me alone in that delightful and unknown furthest corner, apart from struggles, putrefactions and nonsense; the ultimate corner of sugar and toast, where the mermaids catch the branches of the willows and the heart opens to a flute's sharpness. — Federico Garcia Lorca

In the afternoon the ship's company assembled aft, on deck, under the awnings; the flute, the asthmatic meodeon, and the consumptive clarinet crippled the Star Spangled Banner, the choir chased it to cover, and George came in with a peculiarly lacerating screech on the final note and slaughtered it. Nobody mourned. We carried out the corpse on three cheers (that joke was not intentional and I do not endorse it). — Mark Twain

Janie had spent most of the day under a blossoming pear tree in the back-yard. She had been spending every minute that she could steal from her chores under that tree for the last three days. That was to say, ever since the first tiny bloom had opened. It had called her to come and gaze on a mystery. From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds; from the leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom. It stirred her tremendously. How? Why? It was like a flute song forgotten in another existence and remembered again. What? How? Why? This singing she heard that had nothing to do with her ears. — Zora Neale Hurston

Let us play the flute of love to spread the music of peace, joy and happiness. — Debasish Mridha

Yoga may have originated in India, where the cow has been revered as sacred for thousands of years, but times have changed since Lord Krishna played his flute for the cows of Vrindavan. There are factory farms in India now. — Sharon Gannon

God picks up the reed-flute world and blows.
Each note is a need coming through one of us,
a passion, a longing pain.
Remember the lips
where the wind-breath originated,
and let your note be clear.
Don't try to end it.
Be your note. — Rumi

The breath of the flute player: does it belong to the flute? — Rumi

If you wish to be thought a good estate manager, or a good horseman, or a good physician, or a good flute player without really being one, just imagine all the tricks you have to invent just to keep up appearances. You might succeed at first, but in the end you're going to be exposed as an impostor. — Xenophon

And if there come the singers and the dancers and the flute players, buy of their gifts also.
For they too are gatherers of fruit and frankincense, and that which they bring, though fashioned of dreams, is raiment and food for your soul. — Kahlil Gibran

I felt myself no longer a husk but a body with some of the body's sweet juices stirring again. I had my first dream in many months, confused but to this day imperishable, with a flute in it somewhere, and a wild goose, and a dancing girl. — William Styron

Jesper knocked his head against the hull and cast his eyes heavenward. 'Fine. But if Pekka Rollins kills us all, I'm going to get Wylan's ghost to teach my ghost how to play the flute just so that I can annoy the hell out of your ghost. — Leigh Bardugo

What's even worse than a flute? - Two flutes! — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

if ever a pope should command me to play on the flute, build towers, to mend or weave garments, and to stuff sausages, ought not my reason to judge that the pope was foolish in so commanding? — Jan Hus

This was a vagrant of sixty-five, who was going to prison for not playing the flute; or, in other words, for begging in the streets, and doing noting for his livelihood. In the next cell, was another man, who was going to the same prison for hawking tin saucepans without a licence; thereby doing something for his living, in defiance of the Stamp-office. — Charles Dickens

Playing in an orchestra is completely different to playing on my own.
Sometimes I played, sometimes listened; instead of waiting my turn, I sometimes interrupted another player, sometimes I argued, sometimes agreed.
My flute is my mouthpiece and I felt as if I was actually joining in a conversation. — Kevin Crossley-Holland

Thus it is our daughters leave us,
Those we love, and those who love us!
Just when they have learned to help us,
When we are old and lean upon them,
Comes a youth with flaunting feathers,
With his flute of reeds, a stranger
Wanders piping through the village,
Beckons to the fairest maiden,
And she follows where he leads her,
Leaving all things for the stranger! — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Brian's face broke out in a wide grin as he slapped Roarke on the back. "That's a woman, isn't it?"
"Delicate as a rose, my Eve. Fragile and quiet natured." He grinned himself when he heard her curse, loud and vicious. "A voice like a flute."
"And you're sloppy in love with her."
"Pitifully. — J.D. Robb

Now as the Paradisiacal pleasures of the Mahometans consist in playing upon the flute and lying with Houris, be mine to read eternal new romances of Marivaux and Crebillon. — Thomas Gray

I've played every instrument you could possibly think of for 10 minutes. So I'm mediocre at everything. I can play drums, guitar, piano, violin, saxophone, clarinet, flute ... Just not well. — Kat Dennings

Why should I be polished and improved like goods for sale? I might not even want to marry! And besides, I have many skills. I can read and write and play the flute and harp. Why should I change to please some man? If he doesn't like me the way I am, then he can get some other girl for his wife. — Juliet Marillier

Flute Notes from a Reedy Pond
Now coldness comes sifting down, layer after layer,
To our bower at the lily root.
Overhead the old umbrellas of summer Wither like pithless hands.
There is little shelter.
Hourly the eye of the sky enlarges its blank
Dominion. The stars are no nearer. Already frog-mouth and fish-mouth drink The liquor of indolence, and all thing sink Into a soft caul of forgetfulness. The fugitive colors die. Caddis worms drowse in their silk cases,
The lamp-headed nymphs are nodding to sleep like statues.
Puppets, loosed from the strings of the puppetmaster
Wear masks of horn to bed. This is not death, it is something safer. The wingy myths won't tug at us anymore: The molts are tongueless that sang from above the water Of golgotha at the tip of a reed,
And how a god flimsy as a baby's finger
Shall unhusk himself and steer into the air. — Sylvia Plath

It's very important for me to try to relax when I'm travelling, and playing my flute helps me to unwind. — Andrea Bocelli

The democratic youth lives along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to him, at one time drinking and listening to the flute, at another downing water and reducing, now practicing gymnastic, and again idling and neglecting everything; and sometimes spending his time as though he were occupied in philosophy. — Plato

His voice was cloves and nightingales, it took us to spice markets in the Celebs, we drifted with him on a houseboat beyond the Coral Sea. We were like cobras following a reed flute. — Janet Fitch

Yellow is my favorite, but what is yellow? Handmaiden to white, it is a slight tarnish of pure light. Take away a bit of whites absolute luminosity, and what remains is yellow
sunlike, golden as a crown, buttercups in a field, marsh marigolds, a finch's wing, a plastic flute. — Richard Grossinger

A craftsman pulled a reed from the reedbed,
cut holes in it, and called it a human being.
Since then, it's been wailing a tender agony
of parting, never mentioning the skill
that gave it life as a flute — Rumi

It might seem that being a genius is a golden ticket to a life of glamorous soirees with the intellectual elite, champagne flute in hand, arm candy at your side, surrounded by a throng of smiling sycophants. But you might be confusing this scene with the lifestyle of a diplomat — Andre De Guillaume

Pay attention to the gap - the gap between two thoughts, the brief, silent space between words in a conversation, between the notes of a piano or flute, or the gap between the in-breath and the out-breath. When you pay attention to those gaps, awareness of 'something' becomes - just awareness. The formless dimension of pure conciousness arises from within you and replaces identification with form. — Eckhart Tolle

He can blow the flute very well-that 'a can,' said a young married man, who having no individuality worth mentioning was known as 'Susan Tall's husband. — Thomas Hardy

Each culture has some knowledge. That's why I studied with Saj Dev, an Indian flute player. That's why I studied Stockhausen's music. The pygmies' music of the rain forest is very rich music. So the knowledge is out there. And I also believe one should seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave. With that kind of inquisitiveness, one discovers things that were unknown before. — Yusef Lateef

Muse

When at night I wait for her to come,
Life, it seems, hangs by a single strand.
What are glory, youth, freedom, in comparison
with the dear welcome guest, a flute in hand?

She enters now. Pushing her veil aside,
she stares through me with her attentiveness.
I question her: 'And were you Dante's guide,
dictating the Inferno?' She answers: 'Yes. — Anna Akhmatova

I have never received a flute from them for free and I would not accept such a gift from any manufacturer. — James Galway

Someone takes me in his arms. "Hans?" I ask weakly. There is no reply. Only the sensation of long fingers running along the length of my neck, soft and gentle as spring rain. They rest against my collarbones. The caress is light, and somehow reminds me of the flute in my hand. Then I know no more. — S. Jae-Jones

For just as for a flute-player, a sculptor, or an artist, and, in general, for all things that have a function or activity, the good and the well is thought to reside in the function, so would it seem to be for man, if he has a function. — Aristotle.

The quickest way to unlock your talent is to take the flute out of the box. — James Galway

I am a hole in a flute that the Christ's breath moves through. Listen to this music. — Hafez

The flute is traditionally the property of the male side of matrilineal hunter-gatherer societies and was used as a means of communication and personal expression. — R. Carlos Nakai

Flute was actually my first instrument. I had a year of lessons and then stopped after feeling like I was going to faint all of the time. — Rachael Yamagata

Once you have heard the Indian Bamboo flute then everything else is just ordinary! — Osho

Particles of raw inspiration sleet through the universe all the time. Every once in a while one of them hits a receptive mind, which then invents DNA or the flute sonata form or a way of making light bulbs wear out in half the time. But most of them miss. Most people go through their lives without being hit by even one. — Terry Pratchett

We have on this earth what makes life worth living: April's hesitation, the aroma of bread at dawn, a woman's point of view about men, the works of Aeschylus, the beginning of love, grass on a stone, mothers living on a flute's sigh and the invaders' fear of memories. — Mahmoud Darwish