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Composition Quotes

Browse 653 quotes about Composition.

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Composition Quotes

“To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.”

WritingIdeasLightWrittenOughtAchievementPaperPagesDifficultyWorthySentencesPrizeFlashCompositionRight PlaceParagraphLuminousRight WordsSingle SentenceSquanderingWriting WordsDifficulty Of Writing
Author:Mark Twain
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“This symmetrical composition--the same motif at the beginning and at the end--may seem quite "novelistic" to you, and I am willing to agree, but only on condition that you refrain from reading such notions as "fictive," "fabricated," and "untrue to life" into the word "novelistic." Because human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion.”

HumansMayEndsSeemsReadingConditionsFashionWillingAgreeNotionHuman LifeCompositionRefrainUntrueMotifsSymmetrical
Author:Milan Kundera
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“The creation and destruction of harmonic and 'statistical' tensions is essential to the maintenance of compositional drama. Any composition (or improvisation) which remains consonant and 'regular' throughout is, for me, equivalent to watching a movie with only 'good guys' in it, or eating cottage cheese.”

GuyMusicCreationDramaEssentialsEatingDestructionRemainsGuitarTensionCheeseCompositionImprovisationGood GuyMaintenanceCottagesConsonantsCreation And Destruction
Author:Frank Zappa
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“You're so kind, Kazuhiko. That's what I like about you." I like you, too. I love you so much." If he weren't so inarticulate, Kazuhiko could have said so much more. How much her expression, her gentle manner, her pure untainted soul meant to him. How important, in short, her existence was to him. But he wasn't able to put into words. He was only a third-year student in junior high, and worst yet, composition was one of his worst subjects.”

IfsYearsKindSaidImportantSoulAbleExistenceWorstSubjectsLove YouStudentsExpressionLike YouPureThirdsGentleCompositionJuniorsJunior HighI Like YouInarticulateLove You So MuchI Love You So Much
Author:Koushun Takami
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“Perhaps the perusal of such works may, without injustice, be compared with the use of opiates, baneful, when habitually and constantly resorted to, but of most blessed power in those moments of pain and of langour, when the whole head is sore, and the whole heart sick. If those who rail indiscriminately at this species of composition, were to consider the quantity of actual pleasure it produces, and the much greater proportion of real sorrow and distress which it alleviates, their philanthropy ought to moderate their critical pride, or religious intolerance.”

IfsHeartMayRealWholeMomentsUsePainReligiousPleasureGreaterProducePrideOughtSorrowSickBlessedSpeciesInjusticeCriticalProportionQuantityIntoleranceCompositionPhilanthropyDistressModeratesRailAlleviateReligious IntoleranceOpiates
Book:The Miscellaneous Prose Works of Sir Walter Scott, Bart: Biographical and critical notices of eminent novelists
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“While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and sharing motifs (the way Tomas and Sabina exchanged the motif of the bowler hat), but if they meet when they are older, like Franz and Sabina, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them.”

PeopleIfsWayWritingMeanStillsDifferentTogetherYoungLife IsObjectsMusicalBarsOpeningHatsCompositionMotifsBowlersMusical CompositionBowler Hats
Author:Milan Kundera
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“So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyse the manner of its composition, so, sublimer intelligences may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible creature on it.”

WorldInspirationalHumansMayDoeWholeLightEarthLyingStarsVirtueGreatnessCreaturesResponsibleShiningMereVicesWhole WorldRaysSplitsCompositionHuman KnowledgeTwinklingVice And VirtueRays Of LightTale Of Two CitiesTwinkling Stars
Book:A Tale of Two Cities: World Classics
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“His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing... My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System.”

KnowsBookPhilosophyNextFoundLiteratureLanguageIgnoranceTheorySurpriseIgnorantContemporaryRemarkableCompositionSolar SystemClimaxContemporary LiteratureStudy In Scarlet
Book:The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All 56 Stories & 4 Novels
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“It's funny how you can't ask difficult questions in a familiar place, how you have to stand back a few feet and see things in a new way before you realize nothing that is happening to you is normal. The trouble with you and me is we are used to what is happening to us. We grew into our lives like a kernel beneath the earth, never able to process the enigma of our composition...Nothing is normal. It is all rather odd, isn't it, our eyes in our heads, our hands with five fingers, the capacity to understand beauty, to feel love, to feel pain.”

WayFeelsHandsEyeAbleEarthPainUsedAsksProcessDifficultRealizingFiveOur LivesTroubleFeetGrewNormalHappeningsCapacityFingersFamiliarOddNew WaysCompositionEnigmaKernelDifficult QuestionsFive FingersFamiliar Places
Author:Donald Miller
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“Obviously a garden is not the wilderness but an assembly of shapes, most of them living, that owes some share of its composition, it’s appearance, to human design and effort, human conventions and convenience, and the human pursuit of that elusive, indefinable harmony that we call beauty. It has a life of its own, an intricate, willful, secret life, as any gardener knows. It is only the humans in it who think of it as a garden. But a garden is a relationship, which is one of the countless reasons why it is never finished.”

ThinkingKnowsHumansReasonEffortSecretShareDesignShapesGardenHarmonyAppearanceFinishedPursuitReason WhyWildernessConventionsCompositionConvenienceGardenerAssemblyElusiveIntricateSecret LifeIndefinable
Author:W. S. Merwin
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“A text is not a text unless it hides from the first comer, from the first glance, the law of its composition and the rules of its game. A text remains, moreover, forever imperceptible. Its laws and rules are not, however, harbored in the inaccessibility of a secret; it is simply that they can never be booked, in the present, into anything that could rigorously be called a perception.”

FirstsLawGamesSecretForeverPerceptionRemainsCompositionGlancesLaws And Rules
Author:Jacques Derrida
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“For the love of ammonites, man! That's just stupid. Why on earth would the Society need to protect unmarried women from bone-dry lectures regarding soil composition? Do your members find themselves whipped into some sort of dusty frenzy, from which no delicate lass would be safe?" Mr. Barrington tugged on his coat. "Sometimes the debate does get heated." Colin turned to her. "Min, Can I just hit him?" "I think that's a bad idea." "run him through with something sharp?”

ThinkingMenNeedsDoeIdeasSometimesWould BeRunningEarthStupidProtectSafeMembersBonesDebateDrySoilDelicateCompositionCoatsLecturesBad IdeasFrenzyUnmarried
Author:Tessa Dare
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“Human happiness seems to consist in three ingredients; action, pleasure and indolence. And though these ingredients ought to be mixed in different proportions, according to the disposition of the person, yet no one ingredient can be entirely wanting without destroying in some measure the relish of the whole composition.”

HumansPersonsDifferentWholeSeemsActionHappinessThreePleasureOughtProportionIngredientsDestroyingCompositionDispositionRelishIndolenceHuman Happiness
Book:Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)
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“It appears to me that the subject of music, from Machaut to Boulez, has always been its construction. Melodies of 12-tone rows just don't happen. They must be constructed....To demonstrate any formal idea in music, whether structure or stricture, is a matter of construction, in which the methodology is the controlling metaphor of the composition...Only by 'unfixing' the elements traditionally used to construct a piece of music could the sounds exist in themselves--not as symbols, or memories which were memories of other music to begin with.”

IdeasMatterHappensUsedSoundMemoriesMusicPiecesSubjectsElementsStructureMetaphorSymbolsToneMelodyConstructionCompositionFormalConstructsMethodology
Author:Morton Feldman
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“When a man is made up wholly of the dove, without the least grain of the serpent in his composition, he becomes ridiculous in many circumstances of life, and very often discredits his best actions.”

MenMadeCharacterActionPersonalityCircumstancesRidiculousGrainCompositionDoveSerpentDiscredit
Book:Works, including the whole contents of Bp. Hurd's edition: withletters and other pieces not found in any previous collection; and Macaulay's essay on his life and works
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“As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition. This Analysis consists in making Experiments and Observations, and in drawing general Conclusions from them by Induction, and admitting of no Objections against the Conclusions, but such as are taken from Experiments, or other certain Truths. For Hypotheses are not to be regarded in experimental Philosophy.”

PhilosophyTruthScienceCertainDifficultNaturalTakenOughtMathematicsMethodDrawingExperimentsConclusionObservationAnalysisInvestigationCompositionHypothesisDifficult ThingsObjectionsAdmittingNatural Philosophy
Author:Isaac Newton
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“If we consider what science already has enabled men to know-the immensity of space, the fantastic philosophy of the stars, the infinite smallness of the composition of atoms, the macrocosm whereby we succeed only in creating outlines and translating a measure into numbers without our minds being able to form any concrete idea of it-we remain astounded by the enormous machinery of the universe.”

IfsKnowsMenMindIdeasPhilosophyAbleFormSuccessScienceUniverseStarsSpaceNumbersSucceedCreatingAccountsInfiniteEnormousFantasticAtomsConcreteTranslateCompositionMachineryOutlinesImmensitySmallnessAstounded
Author:Guglielmo Marconi
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“In science, probably ninety-nine percent of the knowable has to be discovered. We know only a few streaks about astronomy. We are only beginning to imagine the force and composition of the atom. Physics has not yet found any indivisible matter, or psychology a sensible soul.”

KnowsSoulMatterScienceFoundForceKnowledgePsychologyImaginePercentPhysicsAstronomyNineAtomsSensibleCompositionNinetyStreaksIndivisibleNinety Nine
Book:Lincoln Steffens speaking
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“At the moment I am occupied by an investigation with Kirchoff which does not allow us to sleep. Kirchoff has made a totally unexpected discovery, inasmuch as he has found out the cause for the dark lines in the solar spectrum and can produce these lines artificially intensified both in the solar spectrum and in the continuous spectrum of a flame, their position being identical with that of Fraunhofer's lines. Hence the path is opened for the determination of the chemical composition of the Sun and the fixed stars.”

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Author:Robert Bunsen
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“Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent.”

MindHumansAbilityHistoricalHuman MindHistorianCompositionPenetration
Book:The life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., comprehending an account of his studies, and numerous works, in chronological order: a series of his epistolary correspondence and conversations with many eminent persons; and various original pieces of his composition, never before published; the whole exhibiting a view of literature and literary men in Great Britain, for near half a century during which he flourished
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