Foss Quotes & Sayings

To me, Mozart is our Shakespeare, the one who wrote the most dramatic, psychologically most baffling music. He combined ideas that no one else would have thought of putting together. — Lukas Foss

Most artists have experienced the creative block. We get stuck in our work. We beat our head against the wall: nothing. Sometimes, it is because we are trying something at the wrong time. — Lukas Foss

Truth is a big concept. — Lukas Foss

This book is not about "homeschooling" at all. School is an artificial institution contrived by man. This book is about educating a child in the heart of the family given to that child by his Creator. — Elizabeth Foss

It is obvious that anything a scientist discovers or invents is based on previous discoveries and inventions. The same applies to the arts. — Lukas Foss

W'en you see a man in woe, Walk right up and say hullo. Say hullo and how d'ye do, How's the world a-usin' you? . W'en you travel through the strange Country t'other side the range, Then the souls you've cheered will know Who you be, an' say hullo. — Sam Walter Foss

The even newer new guy now that's come in to take Chandler Foss's spot's name is Dave K. and is one grim story to behold, Thrust assures him, a junior executive guy at ATHSCME Air Displacement, an upscale guy with a picket house and kids and a worried wife with tall hair, who this Dave K.'s bottom was he drank half a liter of Cuerva at some ATHSCME
Interdependence Day office party and everything like that and got in some insane drunken limbo-dance challenge with a rival
executive and tried to like limbo under a desk or a chair or something insanely low, and got his spine all fucked up in a limbolock,
maybe permanently: so the newest new guy scuttles around the Ennet House living room like a crab, his scalp brushing the
floor and his knees trembling with effort. — David Foster Wallace

What we can do for another is the test of powers; what we can suffer is the test of love. — Brooke Foss Westcott

In the nineteenth century the more grandiose word inspiration began to replace the word idea in the arts. — Lukas Foss

Any creator owes a debt to past creation. — Lukas Foss

Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes of men. Silently and perceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or weak; and last some crisis shows what we have become. — Brooke Foss Westcott

Chandler Foss is flossing his teeth — David Foster Wallace

To come to grips with creativity, I must ask creative, adventurous questions - the kind which, in all likelihood, cannot be answered. — Lukas Foss

Bring me men to match my mountains: Bring me men to match my plains: Men with empires in their purpose and new eras in their brains. — Sam Walter Foss

For years that may mean imitation. Then, one day, it is like a door opening, and a new thought comes in. Why not try this instead. Suddenly he is doing something original, almost in spite of himself. — Lukas Foss

Dyslexia isn't a disease. It's a Community — Ben Foss

Indeed taking all the evidence together, it is not too much to say that there is no single historic incident better or more variously supported than the Resurrection of Christ. Nothing but the antecedent assumption that it must be false could have suggested the idea of deficiency in the proof of it. — Brooke Foss Westcott

If one uses music that one does not really love, then one will not succeed in making it one's own. — Lukas Foss

To understand Mozart's contradictory qualities would indeed be to understand genius. — Lukas Foss

Why do we pigeonhole and label an artist? It is a sure way of missing the important, the contradictory, the things that make him or her unique. — Lukas Foss

When I look at a child, I see a living, breathing person, made in God's image, for whom God has a plan. As parent educators, we need to embrace a new notion of learning ... we need to engage the hearten order to effectively educate the child. Our vision of a well-educated child is a child who has a heart for learning, a child who has the tools he needs to continue to learn for a lifetime and a child who has the love to want to do it. — Elizabeth Foss

Yes, influences are enriching, and they can be found in every work of art, even the most original. — Lukas Foss

As I sit down and start to work, I often panic. I stare at the empty piece of music paper. How can I say that my piece will be ready for performance next January when I do not have a recipe for making it happen? — Lukas Foss

That is why the analogy of stealing does not work. With a thief, we want to know how much money he stole, and from whom. With the artist it is not how much he took and from whom, but what he did with it. — Lukas Foss

Great music does not just make me feel good. It means something. It makes us understand. It makes us happy. — Lukas Foss

Composing is like making love to the future. — Lukas Foss

I don't dare postulate about science, but I know that it takes both emotion and intellect in order for art to happen. — Lukas Foss

Personality is essential. It is in every work of art. When someone walks on stage for a performance and has charisma, everyone is convinced that he has personality. I find that charisma is merely a form of showmanship. Movie stars usually have it. A politician has to have it. — Lukas Foss

Anybody can put things together that belong together. to put things together that don't go together, and make it work, that takes genius like Mozart's. Yet he is presented in the play Amadeus as a kind of silly boy whom the gods loved. — Lukas Foss

The fact that Stravinsky used the classics as a major influence is obvious. What is interesting is how he used them, how he turned Bach into Stravinsky. — Lukas Foss

Getting used to the new alignments of roles and responsibilities required by the discipleship model is admittedly difficult. The congregational culture is shocked, and people feel a sense of dislocation. Pastors may understandably begin to feel marginalized and threatened when they discover that areas of ministry that have been expected of them in the past can actually be done better by others. Lay disciples may feel insecure and uneasy - if not inappropriate! - as they step across boundaries into areas of ministry that have been largely reserved for pastors. All need to be reminded repeatedly that discipleship is a matter of calling, giftedness, and training - not title or position. — Michael W. Foss

So after they'd been swindled and bamboozled by the Terrans enough times they retreated to their home planets and bolted all the doors and drew all the curtains. Terrans are tricky customers to deal with even for other humans, so a saintly robot would have had no chance. — J.H.G. Foss

The creative act is like writing a letter. A letter is a project; you don't sit down to write a letter unless you know what you want to say and to whom you want to say it. — Lukas Foss

Commemoration of Brooke Foss Westcott, Bishop of Durham, Teacher, 1901 Be not afraid to pray ... to pray is right. Pray if thou canst with hope; but ever pray Though hope be weak, or sick with long delay. Whatever is good to wish, ask that of heaven; But if for any wish thou darest not pray, Then pray to God to cast that wish away. — Hartley Coleridge

Most people think an artist tries to be original, but originality is the last thing that develops in the artist. — Lukas Foss

My students frequently ask what their next project should be. My advice: immerse yourself in the music you love and you will find what you want to do; you will discover your next project. — Lukas Foss

I say the very things that make the greatest StirAn' the most interestin' things, are things that did n't occur. — Sam Walter Foss

I strongly suggest that we play down basics like who influenced whom, and instead study the way the influence is transformed, in other words: how the artist made it his own. — Lukas Foss

When the atmosphere encourages learning, the learning is inevitable. — Elizabeth Foss

Where shall we get religion? Beneath the open sky, the sphere of crystal silence surcharged with deity.. The midnight earth sends incense up, sweet with the breath of prayer
Go out beneath the naked night and get religion there. — Sam Walter Foss

Seek not for fresher founts afar, just drop you bucket where you are. — Sam Walter Foss

I didn't give up anything. I gained a life I didn't even know existed. — C.M. Foss

Strew gladness on the paths of men-You will not pass this way again. — Sam Walter Foss

It is the element I miss in electronic music - no performance, no loving immersion. Maybe that is why I was never particularly drawn to electronic music. — Lukas Foss

The woods were made for the hunters of dreams,
The brooks for the fishers of song;
To the hunters who hunt for the gunless game
The streams and the woods belong. — Sam Walter Foss

The best way to investigate the elusive phenomenon called the creative process may well be to target all the misconceptions, to explain what the creative process is not. — Lukas Foss

Mozart wrote so many works in his thirty-five years that it would take a lifetime just to write out the notes. We literally do not know how he did it. — Lukas Foss

A hundred thousand men were led By one calf near three centuries dead; They followed still his crooked way And lost a hundred years a day; For thus such reverence is lent To well established precedent. — Sam Walter Foss

There are purple grapes in the Land of Git-Thare. — Sam Walter Foss

Just drop your bucket where you are. — Sam Walter Foss

One day through the primeval wood A calf walked home as good calves should; But made a trail all bent askew, A crooked trail as all calves do ... And men two centuries and a half Trod in the footsteps of that calf. — Sam Walter Foss

Boulez's only concern is with power. He lost the leadership of the avant-guard more than ten years ago to Stockhausen. Now others have moved in. With the need for power, where was he to go? So he chose to be a conductor. He is a wonderful musician, a wonderful intelligence. It's a pity there is no humanity there. Does he have sex? I think not. When men have no sex, they go after power in this big, obsessive way. — Lukas Foss

Since age seven, I've been composing and have never stopped composing, yet, the creative process is as elusive to me as it has ever been. — Lukas Foss

I still do not know where the notes will come from when I accept a commission for a new work. — Lukas Foss

There is another interesting paradox here: by immersing ourselves in what we love, we find ourselves. We do not lose ourselves. One does not lose one's identity by falling in love. — Lukas Foss

When I went back to visit my native Berlin after World War II, I noticed that the only thing I really remembered from my childhood Berlin days is the shoe store. — Lukas Foss

Let me live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to man. — Sam Walter Foss