Sound

“Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?”

“A sound does not view itself as thought, as ought, as needing another sound for its elucidation, as etc.; it has not time for any consideration--it is occupied with the performance of its characteristics: before it has died away it must have made perfectly exact its frequency, its loudness, its length, its overtone structure, the precise morphology of these and of itself.”

“Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.”

“You know the sound of two hands clapping; tell me, what is the sound of one hand?”

“His feet were like fine copper when glowing in a furnace; and his voice was as the sound of many waters.”

“They say gravity is the centre of attraction ; I rather think that noise is. Nothing so soon assembles the inhabitants of a house as a loud and sudden noise:”

“Whenever you wash dishes, cook, or clean, if you make no sound, this is smartness itself. A person who enters a house and makes a lot of noise is revealing a lack of spirituality; even cats and dogs do not make unnecessary sounds, and man as he naturally is does not make any either.”

“Could we not imagine that noise...is itself nothing more than the sum of a multitude of different sounds which are being heard simultaneously?”

“If a tree falls in a forest, and no-one is around to hear it, does it make a noise?”

“Now I will do nothing but listen,”

“A thousand trills and quivering sounds And at a distance die.”

“A noise like of a hidden brook Singeth a quiet tune.”

“By magic numbers and persuasive sound.”

“I hear a sound so fine there's nothing lives'Twixt it and silence.”

“Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.”

“And filled the air with barbarous dissonance.”

“Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds,Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night.”

“Their rising all at once was as the soundOf thunder heard remote.”

“To all proportioned terms he must dispenseAnd make the sound a picture of the sense.”

“The murmur that springsFrom the growing of grass.”

“The sound must seem an echo to the sense.”

“The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.”

“What's the business,The sleepers of the house? Speak, speak!”

“Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound.”

“My eyes are dim with childish tears, Which in those days I heard.”