Arthur O'Shaughnessy quotes

  • Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.

  • Religion is not something separate and apart from ordinary life. It is life - life of every kind viewed from the standpoint of meaning and purpose: life lived in the fuller awareness of its human quality and spiritual significance.

  • Gratitude is something of which none of us can give too much. For on the smiles, the thanks we give, our little gestures of appreciation, our neighbors build their philosophy of life.

  • Music is something that always lifts my spirits and makes me happy, and when I make music I always hope it will have the same effect on whoever listens to it.

  • So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning.

  • When I speak of the gifted listener, I am thinking of the nonmusician primarily, of the listener who intends to retain his amateur status. It is the thought of just such a listener that excites the composer in me.

  • A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

  • One of the dreams of Zionism was to be a bridge. Instead, we are creating exclusion between the East and the West instead of creating bridges; we are contributing to the conflict between East and West by our stupid desire to have more.

  • Was this the big one or was this the small tremor, the warning? Does it get better - does the sensation of being in a dream underwater go away?

  • Prime Minister Sharon, Prime Minister Abbas, I urge you today to end the designs of those who seek destruction, annihilation and occupation, and I urge you to have the will and the courage to begin to realize our dreams of peace, prosperity and coexistence.