Quotes & Sayings About Harps

23Away with your noisy hymns of praise! I will not listen to the music of your harps. 24Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous living. — Anonymous

When (Big) Walter was in the right mood, he could be the most ferocious, the most inventive, the most dangerous harp player I ever heard. — Charlie Musselwhite

I feel like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves; and like trumpets and harps and all the songs I have ever heard! — J.R.R. Tolkien

And even if this world burns up hidden harps will still play here. — Rumi

He looked like an angel - not the kind with harps and halos, but an angel of war, fierce and terrifying. — Kit Rocha

We all have our harps to play. And it's up to you now to know with which ear you'll listen. — Ray Bradbury

I am a believer in angels, though not the picture-book kind with wings and harps. Such angelic accoutrements seem as nonsensical to me as devils sporting horns and carrying pitchforks. To me, angel wings are merely symbolic of their role as divine messengers. — Richard Paul Evans

I bear my testimony that there is no joy to be found in all this world like that of sweet communion with Christ. I would barter all else there is of heaven for that. Indeed, that is heaven. As for the harps of gold and the streets like clear glass and the songs of seraphs and the shouts of the redeemed, one could very well give all these up, counting them as a drop in a bucket, if we might forever live in fellowship and communion with Jesus. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I know ... that's why you're down here and not enjoying some picnic in a golden meadow amongst the harps and puffy clouds.
Lucifer from Angela's Coven — Bruce Jenvey

Hey Boo, I'm in this now, too, & I got a lot of experience playing assholes like they're fucking harps. You need backup, I got you. Stop trying to convince yourself that you're in this alone. — Alexandra Bracken

Western Christians have imagined that, at the end of the day, God is going to throw the present space-time universe into a trashcan and we'll be sitting on clouds playing harps. The ultimate future that we're promised is much more interesting than that. It's new heavens and a new Earth with new bodies to live in. — N. T. Wright

After a Retreat

What hast thou learnt today?
Hast thou sounded awful mysteries,
Hast pierced the veiled skies,
Climbed to the feet of God,
Trodden where saints have trod,
Fathomed the heights above?
Nay,
This only have I learnt, that God is love.

What hast thou heard today?
Hast heard the Angel-trumpets cry,
And rippling harps reply;
Heard from the Throne of flame
Whence God incarnate came
Some thund'rous message roll?
Nay,
This have I heard, His voice within my soul.

What hast thou felt today?
The pinions of the Angel guide
That standeth at thy side
In rapturous ardours beat
Glowing, from head to feet,
In ecstasy divine?
Nay,
This only have felt, Christ's hand in mine. — Robert Hugh Benson

Music and dance. What I have written must surely suggest a people cursed by Heaven,... No people on earth, I am persuaded, loves music so well, nor dance, nor oratory, though the music falls strangely on my ears... More than once I have been at Mr. Treacy's when at close of dinner, some traveling harper would be called in, blind as often as not, his fingernails kept long and the mysteries of his art hidden in their horny ridges. The music would come to us with the sadness of a lost world, each note a messenger sent wandering among the Waterford goblets. Riding home late at night, past tavern or alehouse, I would hear harps and violins, thudding feet rising to a frenzy. I have seen them dancing at evening on fairdays, in meadows decreed by custom for such purposes, their bodies swift-moving, and their faces impassive but bright-eyed, intent. I have watched them in silence, reins held loosely in my hand, and have marveled at the stillness of my own body, my shoulders rigid and heavy. — Thomas Flanagan

When all things repose, do you alone Awake to hear the sweet harps play To Love before him on his way, And the night wind answering in antiphon Till night is overgone? — James Joyce

Her hearing had faded out as soon as he'd touched her - maybe it was the angels playing harps or the exploding fireworks. Maybe her drink was too strong or her heart was too lonely. — Karin Slaughter

What I'd like to do now - well, what I'd like to do now is grow my beard very long, weave it into my pubes and strum it like a harp. — Bill Bailey

A happy union with wife and child is like the music of lutes and harps. — Confucius

I harp always on the 'idea' of life as I dwell perpetually on the existence of the moment. — Marsden Hartley

So heaven was this vague, uneasy, almost cartoonish concept, a confusing cultural mash up of puffy clouds, harps, winged Angel's, Golden sunlight, a giant hand that may or may not belong to a giant man with a flowing white beard named God. — Paul Tremblay

Lakes, carillonst,
Pools and bells,
Fifes and freshets,
Harps and wells;
Flutes and rivers,
Streams, bassoons,
Geysers, trumpets,
Chimes lagoons,
Hear the music,
Drink the water,
As we poor lambs
All go to slaughter.
I love you Eliot.
Good-bye. I cry.
Tears and violins.
Hearts and flowers,
Flowers and tears.
Rosewater, good-bye. — Kurt Vonnegut

Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune. — Igor Stravinsky

O harp of life, so speedily unstrung! — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

But he got right to the top. And I heard harps in the air. My - my master builder! — Henrik Ibsen

My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony. — Fernando Pessoa

Jutta drags herself closer; she watches her brother with outsize eyes. A piano chases the violins. Then woodwinds. The strings sprint, woodwinds fluttering behind. More instruments join in. Flutes? Harps? The song races, seems to loop back over itself. "Werner?" Jutta whispers. He blinks; — Anthony Doerr

Every element has a sound, an original sound from the order of God; all those sounds unite like the harmony from harps and zithers. — Hildegard Of Bingen

I made it when I was young, by my standards, after years of playing on various harps. I shaped its pieces out of Ymris oak beside night fires in far, lonely places where I heard no man's voice but my own. I carved on each piece the shapes of leaves, flowers, birds I saw in my wanderings. In An, I searched three months for strings for it. I found them finally; sold my horse for them. They were strung to the broken harp of Ustin of Aum, who died of sorrow over the conquering of Aum. Its strings were tuned to his sorrow, and its wood was split like his heart. I strung my harp with them, matching note for note in the restringing. And then I returned them to my joy." Morgon — Patricia A. McKillip

In fact, I take the view that God, in his infinite wisdom, didn't bother to spring for two joints - heaven and hell. They're the same place, but heaven is when you get everything you want and you meet Mummy and Daddy and your best friends and you all have a hug and a kiss and play your harps. Hell is the same place - no fire and brimstone - but they all pass by and don't see you. There's nothing, no recognition. You're waving, "It's me, your father," but you're invisible. You're on a cloud, you've got your harp, but you can't play with nobody because they don't see you. That's hell. — Keith Richards

There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of 'Heaven' ridiculous by saying they do not want 'to spend eternity playing harps'. The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them. All the scriptural imagery (harps, crowns, gold, etc.) is, of course, a merely symbolical attempt to express the inexpressible. Musical instruments are mentioned because for many people (not all) music is the thing known in the present life which most strongly suggests ecstasy and infinity. Crowns are mentioned to suggest the fact that those who are united with God in eternity share His splendour and power and joy. Gold is mentioned to suggest the timelessness of Heaven (gold does not rust) and the preciousness of it. People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs. — C.S. Lewis

And the wind plays on those great sonorous harps, the shrouds and masts of ships. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Man of Sorrows is now anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows. Returned in triumph from the overthrow of all his foes, he offers his own rapturous Te Deum in the temple above, and joys in the power of the Lord. Herein let every subject of King Jesus imitate the King; let us lean upon Jehovah's strength, let us joy in it by unstaggering faith, let us exult in it in our thankful songs. Jesus not only has thus rejoiced but he shall do so as he sees the power of divine grace bringing out from their sinful hiding-places the purchase of his soul's travail; we also shall rejoice more and more as we learn by expeience more and more fully the strength of the arm of our covenant God. Our weakness unstrings our harps, but his strength tunes them anew. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

What is a harp but an oversized cheese slicer with cultural pretensions? — Denis Norden

This is how Heaven works. They're practical. We are always looking for rays of light. For lightning bolts or burning bushes. But God is a worker, like us. He made the world - He didn't hire poor Indios to build it for him! God has worker's hands. Just remember - angels carry no harps. Angels carry hammers. — Luis Alberto Urrea

I always imagined heaven being a place far, far away with winged babies playing harps and floating on the clouds. Now honestly, that doesn't sound like a place where I want to be for eternity. It sounds terrible and boring. In fact, if I ever saw a naked chubby baby with wings, I'd probably run as fast as I could the other way; I — Jefferson Bethke

Economists are like Aeolian harps, and the sounds that issue from them are determined by the winds that blow. — Rebecca West

Not all the harps above Can make a heavenly place, If God His residence remove, Or but conceal His face. All thou needest to make thee blessed, supremely blessed, is to be with Christ. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Whatever Juice this sky will pour this gaping parched old throat will drain; What time the Harper harps I'll dance: 'tis He, not I, who shall complain. Meal may be scarce and cakes be burnt, yet I weep not nor even scold: The sun is food enough for me, 't is large, and has not yet grown cold. — Ridgely Torrence

Willows and Poplars "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. Upon the willows in the midst thereof we hanged our harps." Thus sang the Psalmist of the sorrows of the exiles in Babylon, and his song has fastened the name of the great and wicked city upon one of the most familiar willows, while also making it "weep"; for the common weeping willow is botanically named Salix Babylonica. — John Horace McFarland

The banquet is ready, and the minstrels are tuning their harps to celebrate the return from your wanderings to your Father's heart and home, with the gladness of feasting, and with the voice of thanksgiving and of melody. — Octavius Winslow

How tall is it?" [The Harps]
"according to the sagas, it links through time and space and keeps our world and your world tethered together"
"Pretty big, then — Kathryn James

Heaven must be populated with some rather strange creatures if all they lived for was to go to a place where they can strum harps for eternity. — Anton Szandor LaVey

If all the harps in the world were burned down, still inside the heart there will be hidden music playing. — Rumi

There is a land, where the roses are without thorns, where the flowers are not mixed with brambles. In that land, there is eternal spring, and light without any cloud. The tree of life groweth in the midst thereof; rivers of pleasures are there, and flowers that never fade. Myriads of happy spirits are there, and surround the throne of God with a perpetual hymn. The angels with their golden harps sing praises continually, and the cherubim fly on wings of fire! This country is Heaven ... — Anna Letitia Barbauld

Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulder'd string?
I am shamed through all my nature to have lov'd so slight a thing. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Limbo is the place. In Limbo one has natural happiness without the beatific vision; no harps; no communal order; but wine and conversation and imperfect, various humanity. Limbo for the unbaptized, for the pious heathen, the sincere sceptic. — Evelyn Waugh

His guess was confirmed when they approached the well-built harbour of a prosperous town and saw the banners flying from the bastions of the citadel. After the sultry heat of Zarzis, the sailors' hearts were lifted and refreshed by the airy music reaching their ears as they pulled in towards the marble wharf. Only when they docked did they realise that they were listening to the sound of the breeze strumming through countless wind-harps and chiming among webs and lattices of translucent shell. It felt as though the wind that had blown them there was now celebrating their arrival. — Lindsay Clarke

Prayers are instantly noticed in heaven. The moment Saul began to pray, the Lord heard him. Here is comfort for the distressed but praying soul. When our hearts are broken and we bow in prayer, we are often only able to employ the language of sighs and tears; still our groaning has made all the harps of heaven thrill with music. That tear has been caught by God and treasured in the receptacle of heaven. "Put my tears in your bottle"1 implies that they are caught as they flow. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Any time I let it, the weight of living creeps in and starts to drag her down. It would be too easy to say that I feel invisible. Instead, I feel painfully visible, and entirely ignored. People talk to her, but it feels like they are outside a house, talking through the walls. There are friends, but they are people to spend time with, not people to share time with. There's a false beast that takes the form of instinct and harps on the pointlessness of everything that happens. — David Levithan

Hills tell old stories. Cliffs are poets with harps — George MacKay

Some take their gold in minted mold, and some in harps thereafter, but give me mine in bubbles fine and keep the change in laughter. — Oliver Herford

We will die soon; and still our "hope is from him." May we not expect that when we face illness He will send angels to carry us to His bosom? We believe that when the pulse is faint and the heart is weak, some angelic messenger shall stand and look with loving eyes upon us and whisper, "Come away!" As we approach the heavenly gate, we expect to hear the welcome invitation, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."1 We are expecting harps of gold and crowns of glory; we are hoping soon to be among the company of shining ones before the throne; we are looking forward and longing for the time when we shall be like our glorious Lord - for "We shall see him as he is."2 Then if these are your hopes, O my soul, live for God; live with the desire and resolve to glorify Him from whose grace in your election, redemption, and calling you safely "hope" for the coming glory. — Anonymous

Once, he'd dreamed of experimental fusions, that he would be the one to merge folk harps with anime. Now he saw the incommensurability. In his own words: matter and antimatter. The end of the world. — Karen Joy Fowler

Not all who own a harp are harpers. — Marcus Terentius Varro

This is what they all come to who exclusively harp on experience. They do not stop to consider that experience is only one half of experience. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Your body is the harp of the soul. — Khalil Gibran

Think of what you are, you Christians. You are God's children; you are joint heirs with Christ. The 'many mansions' are for you; the palms and harps of the glorified are for you. You have a share in all that Christ has and is and shall be. — Charles Spurgeon

Oh, I know, I know, she was a sweet girl, a simple country girl; everyone told me that, both then and since. But I could not forgive her animal dumbness - worse, her rank sensuality, easy as any cow's, and like her dumpling breasts, quite irresistable to men - while those of us whom God has made to think and feel, who are strung out like harps along the wires of our own nature, why, we are rarer than music and must content ourselves with smaller audiences. — Rosalind Miles

Every step you take, a million doors open in front of you like poppies; your next step closes them, and another million bloom. You get on a train, you pick up a lamp, you speak, you don't. What decides why one thing gets picked to be the way it will be? Accident? Fate? Some weakness in ourselves? Forget your harps, your tin-foil angels - the only heaven worth having would be the heaven of answers. — Mark Slouka

At Bloomington, Indiana, I was invited to listen to music written in quarter tones for four harps and voices. I had to go out to be sick. — Elisabeth Schwarzkopf

Oh God, the terrible tyranny of the majority. We all have our harps to play. And it's up to you to know with which ear you'll listen. — Ray Bradbury

And what if all of animated nature Be but organic harps diversely framed, That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps, Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, At once the soul of each, and God of all? — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Families of privilege and money would have harps in their parlors, and their cultured daughters would learn to play. It's got such a strange history. But that wasn't the context that I learned it in, so the inherent friction between that history and the more humanist folk-y history wasn't in my conscience at all. — Joanna Newsom

Then the voices of the Ainur, like unto harps and lutes, and pipes and trumpets, and viols and organs, and like unto countless choirs singing with words, began to fashipn the theme of Iluvatar to a great music; and a sound arose of endless interchanging melodies woven in harmony that passed beyond hearing into the depths and into the heights, and the places of the dwelling of Iluvatar were filled to overflowing, and the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void. — J.R.R. Tolkien

The more big business talks about something, the less of it there is. For example, it 'values' jobs just at the moment when they disappear; it revels in 'autonomy' when in fact you have to fill out forms in triplicate for the slightest trifle and ask the advice of six people to make insignificant decisions; it harps on 'ethics' while believing in absolutely nothing. — Corinne Maier

For Ryan's Daughter I used a total of eight harps, something that was, at least, weird. — Maurice Jarre

Jesus! it is the name which moves the harps of heaven to melody. Jesus! the life of all our joys. If there be one name more charming, more precious than another, it is this name. It is woven into the very warp and woof of our psalmody. Many of our hymns begin with it, and scarcely any, that are good for anything, end without it. It is the sum total of all delights. It is the music with which the bells of heaven ring; a song in a word; an ocean for comprehension, although a drop for brevity; a matchless oratorio in two syllables; a gathering up of the hallelujahs of eternity in five letters. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

My soul is like a hidden orchestra; I do not know which instruments grind and play away inside of me, strings and harps, timbales and drums. I can only recognize myself as symphony. — Fernando Pessoa

As the profoundest philosophy of ancient Rome and Greece lighted her taper at Israel's altar, so the sweetest strains of the pagan muse were swept from harps attuned on Zion's hill. — Edward Thomson

Where is the soul? ... I refuse to believe anything of that kind without proof. The idea that, as soon as a man's breath leaves his body, the soul flops out like a chicken's head and flies off into space to find a lodgment where there [are] harps and haloes. Too much for me. — Robert Green Ingersoll

There are vast realms of consciousness still undreamed of -vast ranges of experience, like humming of unseen harps, we know nothing of, within us. — D.H. Lawrence

The actor should not play a part. Like the Aeolian harps that used to be hung in the trees to be played only by the breeze, the actor should be an instrument played upon by the character he depicts. — Alla Nazimova

I've played everything but the harp. — Lionel Barrymore

Not like a heaven where you ride unicorns, play harps, and live in a mansion made of clouds. But yes. I believe in something with a capital S. Always have. — John Green

Don't worry about saving these songs! And if one of our instruments breaks, it doesn't matter. We have fallen into the place where everything is music. The strumming and the flute notes rise into the atmosphere, and even if the whole world's harps should burn up, there will still be hidden instruments playing — Jalaluddin Rumi

My pen is my harp and my lyre; my library is my garden and my orchard. — Judah Halevi

Heaven is on this earth. There are no angels on the clouds with twanging harps ... That's just another man's fantasy. — John Lydon