Plectrum Quotes & Sayings

A good book is the plectrum with which our else silent lyres are struck. — Henry David Thoreau

Tuning must come first. Each recital begins with a careful tightening of the pegs on the cross-bar, twisting them in their socket of red threads as each string is plucked and tested. He uses his thumb for this, softer and subtler than the plectrum, his head bent to the vibrating string and his lips slightly open, breathing quickly, as over the body of a lover. — Ann Wroe

From love's plectrum arises
the song of the string of life
Love is the light of life
love is the fire of life — Muhammad Iqbal

For suppose that every tool we had could perform its task, either at our bidding or itself perceiving the need, and if-like the statues made by Daedalus or the tripods of Hephaestus, of which the poet says that "self-moved they enter the assembly of the gods" - shuttles in a loom could fly to and fro and a plectrum play a lyre all self-moved, then master-craftsmen would have no need of servants nor masters of slaves. — Aristotle.

saw my sweetheart wandering about the house; he had taken a rebec and was playing a melody.
With a plectrum like fire he was playing a sweet melody, drunken and dissolute and charming from the Magian wine.
He was invoking the saqi in the air of Iraq2 ; the wine was his object, the saqi was his excuse.
The moonfaced saqi pitcher in his hand, entered from a corner and set it in the middle.
He filled the first cup with that flaming wine; did you ever see water sending out flames?
He set it on his hand for the sake of the lovers, then prostrated and kissed the threshold.
My sweetheart seized it from him and quaffed the wine; flames from that wine went running over his face.
He was beholding his own beauty, and saying to the evil eye, "Never has there been, nor shall there come in this age, another like me. — Jalaluddin Rumi

Among other words used in ordinary conversation, [Francis of Assisi] could never hear "the love of God" without a kind of transformation within himself. For immediately upon hearing "the love of God," he would become excited, stirred, and inflamed, as though an inner chord of his heart had been plucked by the plectrum of the outward voice of the speaker ... . "The love of him," he said, "who loved us much is much to be loved."1 - Thomas of Celano,The Second Life of Saint Francis — Pope Francis

You don't want to be a one-trick pony. On a lot of Smiths songs, I used a pick or a plectrum, and for some of the slow songs, I used my thumbs and my fingers. That's why I love the bass - it's adaptable, and you can express yourself so well with it. — Andy Rourke

The golden rule for playing the bass is that's it all about feel, not just plonking away. You need to feel the sound, not using a pick or a plectrum - which has meant plenty of calluses on my fingers. — Suzi Quatro