Magic Flute Quotes & Sayings

The idea that the Gate is dangerous and could destroy those who try to enter it is familiar to anyone who has seen the Magic Flute by Mozart or the many mandalas of India and Tibet that show fierce guardians at the gates. Even in Biblical mythology, there is an angel with a fiery sword at the Gate to Paradise. — Simon

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

'The Magic Flute,' I think, is fundamentally asking what is it to change people's consciousness. — Simon McBurney

My proposition is that music is at the heart of what 'The Magic Flute' means: that it's Mozart's music, not the words, we should be attending to. Music expresses what can't be expressed otherwise. — Simon McBurney

Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness. The symbol of art is seen again in the magic flute of the Great God Pan which makes the young goats frisk at the edge of the grove. All modern art begins to appear comprehensible and in a way great when it is interpreted as an attempt to instill youthfulness into an ancient world . — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Too bad. And Mozart, not long after writing The Magic Flute, had died
in his thirties
of kidney disease. And had been buried in an unmarked pauper's grave.
Thinking this, he wondered if Mozart had any intuition that the future did not exist, that he had already used up his little time. Maybe I have too, Rick thought as he watched the rehearsal move along. This rehearsal will end, the performance will end, the singers will die, eventually the last score of the music will be destroyed in one way or another; finally the name "Mozart" will vanish, the dust will have won. If not on this planet then another. We can evade it awhile. As the andys can evade me and exist a finite stretch longer. But I will get them or some other bounty hunter gets them. In a way, he realized, I'm part of the form-destroying process of entropy. — Philip K. Dick

Mozart's seeming frothiness is just a light touch with very profound material. That's what I've found working on 'The Magic Flute.' — Simon McBurney

[Forster] quotes approvingly from this discussion, from The Magic Flute [by Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson]
"Lord Buddha was your gospel true?"
"True and False."
"What was true in it?"
"Selflessness and Love."
"What false?"
"Flight from Life. — Zadie Smith