Quotations

"Mozart in his music was probably the most reasonable of the world's great composers. It is the happy balance between flight and control, between sensibility and self-discipline, simplicity and sophistication of style that is his particular province... Mozart tapped once again the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breath-taking rightness that has never since been duplicated."

— Aaron Copland, American composer, born 1900

"The inspired moment may sometimes be described as a kind of hallucinatory state of mind: one half of the personality emotes and dictates while the other half listens and notates. The half that listens has better look the other way, had better simulate a half attention only, for the half that dictates is easily disgruntled and avenges itself for too close inspection by fading entirely away."

— Aaron Copland, American composer, born 1900

"Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep."

— Le Corbusier, Swiss-French architect, born 1887

"Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light."

— Le Corbusier, Swiss-French architect, born 1887

"A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe, and fifty times: It is a beautiful catastrophe."

— Le Corbusier, Swiss-French architect, born 1887

"Dancing is my wife, my woman."

— Joaquin Cortes, Spanish dancer, born 1969

"Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is not seeing."

— Bill Cosby, American comedian, born 1937

"What the use of having ignorance if you can't show it?"

— Lou Costello, American comedian, born 1906

"Through the days of love and celebration and joy, and through the dark days of mourning, the faithful horse has been with us always."

— Elizabeth Cotten, American blues singer, born 1893

"The tragedy of life is not death but what we let die inside of us while we live."

— Norman Cousins, American political journalist, born 1915

"Each patient carries his own doctor inside him."

— Norman Cousins, American political journalist, born 1915

"I have learned never to underestimate the capacity of the human mind and body to regenerate -- even when prospects seem most wretched. The life force may be the least understood force on earth."

— Norman Cousins, American political journalist, born 1915

"Not every illness can be overcome. But many people allow illness to disfigure their lives more than it should. They cave in needlessly. They ignore and weaken whatever powers they have for standing erect. There is always a margin within which life can be lived with meaning and even with a certain measure of joy, despite illness."

— Norman Cousins, American political journalist, born 1915

"The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat."

— Jacques Cousteau, French biologist, born 1910