Menuhin Quotes & Sayings

To play great music, you must keep your eyes on a distant star. — Yehudi Menuhin

Music creates order out of chaos. — Yehudi Menuhin

There are three levels of service. The highest level is that of one who performs good deeds the whole day and yet feels that he has not acheived anything. The second level is someone who, though he has not done anything, knows that he has not corrected anything in this world. This is good, and there is hope for him that he might correct his ways. However, someone who is righteous in his own eyes deceived himself all his life; his good deeds will be lost. — Yehudi Menuhin

Do we not find freedom along the guiding lines of discipline? — Yehudi Menuhin

It is music that welds spiritual and sensual, that can convey ecstasy free of guilt, faith without dogma, love as homage, and a person at home with nature and the infinite. — Yehudi Menuhin

As a cameraman, I was paid to stand within a few feet of Yehudi Menuhin performing. I saw Rudolph Nureyev dancing. I couldn't believe I was being paid for that. — Michael Bond

Our life must have an aim, but we must also ensure that the direction we take is a good one. — Yehudi Menuhin

All of us are displaced. Few people live where their great-grandparents lived or speak the language their great-grandparents spoke. — Hephzibah Menuhin

I would hate to think I am not an amature. An amateur is one who loves what he is doing. Very often, I'm afraid, the professional hates what he is doing. So, I'd rather be an amateur. — Yehudi Menuhin

If I wanted to play the violin, I had to work. Because anything that one wants to do really, and one loves doing, one must do everyday. It should be as easy to the artist and as natural as flying is to a bird. And you can't imagine a bird saying well, I'm tired today, I'm not going to fly! — Yehudi Menuhin

The violinist must possess the poet's gift of piercing the protective hide which grows on propagandists, stockbrokers and slave traders, to penetrate the deeper truth which lies within. — Yehudi Menuhin

A dream is unrehearsed. — Yehudi Menuhin

It is perhaps life's greatest accomplishment to live to old age, maintaining one's wits, one's sense of humor, one's health, and one's charm. — Yehudi Menuhin

Music creates order out of chaos; for rythem imposes unianimity upon the divergent, melody imposes contuniuty upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous. — Yehudi Menuhin

Mozart resolved his emotions on a level that transformed them into moods uncontaminated by mortal anguish, enabling him to express the angelic anguish that is so peculiarly his own. — Yehudi Menuhin

Everyone should in some way be creative, irrespective of the quality of that which he creates. — Yehudi Menuhin

A way of life which excludes the realm of the unknown and the mysterious is simply not in harmony with life itself. — Yehudi Menuhin

There are no rules in the service of God, and this itself is no rule. — Yehudi Menuhin

I still look to music to heal and bind; I still think the musician can be a trusted object offering his fellow-man solace but also a reminder of human excellence. — Yehudi Menuhin

The violinist is that peculiarly human phenomenon distilled to a rare potency - half tiger, half poet. — Yehudi Menuhin

Freedom means choosing your burden. — Hephzibah Menuhin

Yes, I mean like you know, having studied with Yehudi Menuhin that is like some direct route into Bach, because he was one of the foremost interpreters of Bach for the violin. — Nigel Kennedy

The ultimate aim in life should be to fulfill to the utmost all that within our ability and to share that which is good and beautiful. — Yehudi Menuhin

I never like to play for myself, and that is why I don't own a grand piano. To play for yourself is like looking at yourself in a mirror. I like to practice; that is to work at a task. But to play there must be an audience. New things happen when you play for an audience. You don't know what will occur. You make discoveries with the music, and it is always the first time. It is an exchange, a communion. — Hephzibah Menuhin

Searching and the route we take are more important than making a find. — Yehudi Menuhin

Homeopathy is one of the few medical specialties which carries no penalties
only benefits. — Yehudi Menuhin

Each human being has the eternal duty of turning what is hard and brutal into
a tender and subtle offering, what is crude into an object of refinement, what
is ugly into a thing of beauty, confrontation into collaboration, ignorance into
knowledge, hereby rediscovering the child's dream of a creative reality
incessantly renewed by death, the servant of life, and by life the servant of love — Yehudi Menuhin

Menuhin was playing Bach on a fantastic spiritual level when he was a teenager. — Nigel Kennedy

In reality, infinity is merely the distance to the heart of a stranger. Eternity is the moment of cognition. — Yehudi Menuhin

Music is a therapy.It is a communication far more powerful than words, far more immediate, far more efficient. — Yehudi Menuhin

Life is not a finished product, it is only what we make of it, and if we make nothing of it, someone else will, and we will be his slave. — Yehudi Menuhin

Sometimes, when I play music, I feel as if I am giving life ... It isn't just notes on the paper anymore: you are recreating the thought, transmitting it. It becomes shareable, but it can never be kept. You go through and at the same time you let go of the experience. That is part of the wonder of music: it can never be kept; it is ephemeral and at the same time enduring. — Hephzibah Menuhin

It is a technique ideally suited to prevent physical and mental illness and to protect the body generally, developing an inevitable sense of self-reliance and assurance. — Yehudi Menuhin

Peace may sound simple - one beautiful word - but it requires everything we have, every quality, every strength, every dream, every high ideal. — Yehudi Menuhin

We are full of rhythms ... our pulse, our gestures, our digestive tracts, the lunar and seasonal cycles. — Yehudi Menuhin

Homeopathy is the safest and more reliable approach to ailments and has withstood the assaults of established medical practice for over 100 years — Yehudi Menuhin

When I was in my teens, Yehudi Menuhin, who was at work on his project 'The Music of Man,' introduced me to the great astronomer Carl Sagan. It was Sagan who first opened my eyes to the magnitude of the universe, and essentially to the notion of 'music of the spheres.' — Daniel Hope

To be an outstanding musician, you have to be very attentive to the smallest detail and willing to have infinite patience in the pursuit of your ideal. You require absolute control and professionalism. — Yehudi Menuhin

A society without its dreamers can never be free. — Yehudi Menuhin

I can only think of music as something inherent in every human being - a birthright. Music coordinates mind, body and spirit. — Yehudi Menuhin

Music lives and breathes to tell us who we are and what we face. It is a path between ourselves and the infinite. — Yehudi Menuhin

I was always in love with music, but my parents never really saw that I had talent, and it was really just by chance that I made it into the Menuhin School, and from then on my life changed. And that was when I realized, OK, this is what I want to do. But, until then, it was really just a passion, a hobby. — Richard Hyung-ki Joo

Improvisation is the expression of the accumulated yearnings, dreams, and wisdom of the soul. — Yehudi Menuhin

Mrs. Horowitz said, "It is inexcusable that humans think they can murder other animals because they murder themselves. I must tell you, I hate humans. They terrify me."
"They should," I continued. "I interviewed Yehudi Menuhin the other day. — David Dubal

In all teaching there must be a fusion of authority as an adult providing a stable framework for the children in one's care, and humility as another human being ready to educate an equal who may turn out to be a superior. — Yehudi Menuhin

We embark unhesitatingly on the path, in a direction that is absolutely right and urgent, supported by everyone, in the knowledge that this path is but a learning process ... We have to keep on learning, creating, applying, by-passing, touching upon, refining and clarifying a number of notions and details that need to be improvised and applied and which, thank God, we cannot foresee. The only rigidity lies in our will, our conviction that we are on the right road and that our initiatives are most pressing. — Yehudi Menuhin

The practice of yoga induces a primary sense of measure and proportion. Reduced to our own body, our first instrument, we learn to play it, drawing from it maximum resonance and harmony. — Yehudi Menuhin

Why is compassion not part of our established curriculum, an inherent part of our education? Compassion, awe, wonder, curiosity, exaltation, humility - these are the very foundation of any real civilization. — Yehudi Menuhin