Longstanding Dictionary Quotes & Sayings

Beethoven wrote in three flats a lot. That's because he moved twice. — Victor Borge

On the intimate relationships, I'd say you can be someone who wouldn't normally get attention in traditional media and come onto Instagram and build this massive following. — Kevin Systrom

Professional musicians, in general, possess what most of us would regard as remarkable powers of musical imagery. Many composers, indeed, do not compose initially or entirely at an instrument but in their minds. There is no more extraordinary example of this than Beethoven, who continued to compose (and whose compositions rose to greater and greater heights) years after he had become totally deaf. It is possible that his musical imagery was even intensified by deafness, for with the removal of normal auditory input, the auditory cortex may become hypersensitive, with heightened powers of musical imagery (and sometimes even auditory hallucinations). — Oliver Sacks

Be assured that Christianity is something more than forms and creeds and ceremonies: there is life, and power, and reality, in our holy faith. — George Muller

Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than action; innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts (as has been well said) 'thou shalt not' predominates unduly over 'thou shalt. — John Stuart Mill

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see - and to see we have only to look. — Giovanni Giocondo

To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely. — Edmund Burke

I'm incredibly sad that my mother's not here to see my kids and that my kids don't get to know her. And she didn't meet my husband. That's one of the hardest things. I don't even know how to put that into words. — Stella McCartney

Accustom yourself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply awareness, and death is the privation of all awareness; therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life an unlimited time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. — Epicurus

This is the belief of the Left: You negotiate with evil, and get tough with your allies — Dennis Prager

Society has no qualms about a masseuse who is paid for touching people, or about laborers, or professional athletes or dancers, all of whom make a living with their bodies. Why should we make an exception for sex? — Sydney Biddle Barrows

It is said that history turns on small hinges. A human career, too, results from an accumulating series of decisions about large and small matters over a period of years. But the catch is that you can never know when a seemingly small decision may prove to be, from the vantage of later years, the big decision of your life. — Norman Vincent Peale