"Music of the spheres" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wrestle with; moreover he had been in England, and liked it; he smoked a pipe; he washed. Also, as he privily confided to us in the young hours of one morning, he had his doubts as to the divinity of the KAISER, and was not quite convinced that RICHARD STRAUSS had composed the music of the spheres. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... day for any man when he first walks into a Cabinet. But when a humble-minded man thinks of such a phase of life, his mind becomes lost in wondering what a Cabinet is. Are they gods that attend there or men? Do they sit on chairs, or hang about on clouds? When they speak, is the music of the spheres audible in their Olympian mansion, making heaven drowsy with its harmony? In what way do they congregate? In what order do they address each other? Are the voices of all the deities free and equal? Is plodding Themis from the ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... our friend Clarke, who at present is studying the music of the spheres at my elbow. The Georgium Sidus he thinks is rather out of tune; so, until he rectify that matter, he ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... not only to the study of the Pythagorean philosophy as to numbers, but also to the Kabalah, and will aid you in discovering the True Word, and understanding what was meant by "The Music of the Spheres." Modern science strikingly confirms the ideas of Pythagoras in regard to the properties of numbers, and that they govern in the Universe. Long before his time, nature had extracted her cube-roots ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... huntsman and the salmon to the angler. But he had acquired great skill in his sport, and could pursue his game with all the craft which experience will give. He could look at a woman as though he saw all heaven in her eyes, and could listen to her as though the music of the spheres was to be heard in her voice. Then he could whisper words which, to many women, were as the music of the spheres, and he could persevere, abandoning all other pleasures, devoting himself to the one ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... cherish him as a great interpreter of human love. We call him poet, composer, artist, and speak of him reverently as Master. We say that his lips have been wet with dews of Hybla,—that, like the sage of Crotona, he has heard the music of the spheres,—that he comes to us, another Numa, radiant and inspired from the kisses ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... not appear so strange if we consider what we have ordinary experience of, how much custom stupefies our senses. We need not go to what is reported of the people about the cataracts of the Nile; and what philosophers believe of the music of the spheres, that the bodies of those circles being solid and smooth, and coming to touch and rub upon one another, cannot fail of creating a marvellous harmony, the changes and cadences of which cause the revolutions and dances of the stars; but that the hearing sense of all creatures here below, being ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... soul, My country's loveliness! Those starry choirs That watch around the pole, And the moon's tender light, and heavenly fires Through golden halls that roll. O chorus of the night! O planets, sworn The music of the spheres To follow! Lovely watchers, that think scorn To rest till day appears! Me, for celestial homes of glory born, Why here, O, why so long, Do ye behold an exile from on high? Here, O ye shining throng, With lilies spread the mound where I shall lie: Here let ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... moon. Comes it with sunrise, when the sunrise floats From Night's bold towers, vast in the East, and gray Till tower and wall flash into fiery clouds, Moving along the verge, stately and slow, Ordered by the old music of the spheres? Perchance it trembles in October's oaks; Or, twining with the brilliant, berried vine, Would hide the tender, melancholy elm. Well might it rest within those solemn woods Where sunlight never falls—whose tops are green With airs from heaven,—its balmy ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... "artist." He never worked his conceptions out. His scores are gorged with mere suggestiveness. They are nothing if they are not played again and again. For twenty or thirty years Richard Wagner was outlawed because his music was infinitely unfinished (like the music of the spheres). People seemed to want him to write ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... cannot take it in. The lightning's wing, too weak to sweep its space, Sinks half way o'er it like a wearied bird;— It is the mirror of the stars, where all Their host within the concave firmament, Gay marching to the music of the spheres, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... immovable earth beneath one's feet! one almost felt the movement, the respiration of God in it. And yet how greatly even the physical eye, the sensible imagination (so to term it) was flattered by the theorem. What joy in that motion, the prospect, the music, the music of the spheres!—he could listen to it in a perfection such as had never been conceded ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater
... made to delight in the unities of nature. At the basis of music there are certain fixed ratios; and in poetry, of every description, there are measures, and correspondencies. Pythagoras has often been ridiculed for his doctrine of "the music of the spheres;" and probably his doctrine was somewhat fanciful, but later science shows that there is a harmony in all nature—in its forms, in its forces, and in its motions. The highest unorganized and all organized objects take definite forms ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... fundamental chord, resolvable into the diatonic scale—as we look upon the beam of white which the prism decomposes into the solar spectrum, and in the ghostly watches of the night, we might recognize the 'music of the spheres' as the planets rushed around their airy orbits, with a noise like the 'noise of many waters,' no longer a poetic illusion, ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... is your great friend, and that, therefore, just at first, Walter will not be your friend, I would tell you more about him,—how handsome he is, how manly, and how clever. And then his voice is like the music of the spheres. You won't feel like being his friend at first, but you must look forward to his being your friend; you must love him—as I do Mr. Fenwick; and you must tell Mr. Fenwick that he must open his heart ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... sweating, swearing, praying, loving, hating, struggling, failing, sinning, repenting—all working and living according to a vast harmony, which sometimes we can catch clearly and sometimes miss entirely. I think, that morning, for a time, I heard the true music of the spheres, ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... the meeting-house, and obtained a seat, or rather standing, in the gallery, determined to be an eyewitness of all the sport of the day. Presently music was heard approaching, such as I had never heard before. It must be 'the music of the spheres.' Anon, three enormous white wigs, supported by three stately, venerable men, yclad in black, flowing robes, were located in the pulpit. A platform of wigs was formed in the body pews, on which one might apparently walk as securely as on the stage. The candidates for degrees seemed to have made ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... time, a happy time, so many, many centuries hence, when I used to wake in the soft summer mornings, out of sweet dreams of her, and say "Hello, Central!" just to hear her dear voice come melting back to me with a "Hello, Hank!" that was music of the spheres to my enchanted ear. She got three dollars a week, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... air waft it on to mingle with the thousand other long-quenched voices which people the distant realms of space, and form together that unutterable harmony which, by consent of the poets, is named the music of the spheres. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... not even their company. To-morrow you shall begin life again: shall write your book, make your fortune, do anything; meanwhile you sit, and the jolly world swings round, and you seem to hear it circle to the music of the spheres. What pipe was ever thus beatifying in effect? You are aching all over, and enjoying it; and the scent of the limes drifts in through the window. This is undoubtedly the best and greatest country in the world; and none but good fellows ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... the gods give more in turn: The music of the spheres for dross of gold; For o'er-officious cares, flame-songs that burn Their pathway through the years and never old. And he who shunned vain cares and vainer strife Found an eternity in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... I object to the music of the spheres? In spite of the grand capabilities for falsehood and hypocrisy which had been developed in my nature since the previous evening, it was as much as I could do to answer my mother's question deliberately, to the effect that I didn't think I ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... optics given, To inspect a mite, not comprehend the heaven? Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er, To smart and agonize at every pore? Or quick effluvia darting through the brain, Die of a rose in aromatic pain? If Nature thundered in his opening ears, And stunned him with the music of the spheres, How would he wish that Heaven had left him still The whispering zephyr, and the purling rill? Who finds not Providence all good and wise, Alike in what it gives, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... introduction to them, we grow aware that these apparently undecorated and unmusical masterpieces are radiant and resounding with a beauty and a music which "eye hath not seen nor ear heard." For flowers we are given stars, for the song of birds the music of the spheres, and for that human ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... one song magnificently rise, The music of the spheres, That more than marble should immortalize My name ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... Roman virgin and martyr, A.D. 230, patron saint of music, especially church music, and reputed inventor of the organ; sometimes represented as holding a small organ, with her head turned heavenwards as if listening to the music of the spheres, and sometimes as playing on an organ and with a heavenly expression of face. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... with his anger at the bagpipe serenade. And the last Caper saw of him he was leading six pifferari into a wine shop, where they would not come out until seven of them were unable to tell the music of bagpipes from the music of the spheres. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... us sweetly and unconsciously as if they were fresh from heaven—as if they had just been caught passing from the music of the spheres, are all handed up to them on ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... supreme benefactor. And a note of exquisite moral beauty is added if the benefactor be the same person whom the guilty man had injured. This is what is meant by forgiveness. This is why forgiveness is so divine a thing. This is the reason why, when an act of genuine forgiveness occurs, "the music of the spheres" seems to become audible in our nether world. And this is also the reason why we often see such a strange kind of tie springing up between a person who has been chastised and the one who has chastised him in the right spirit ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... kettle burst into a thousand fragments, and the head disappeared up the chimney. Then the phantom beauty, uttering a shrill, dismal scream, melted into air—and the enchantment was dissolved forever. At that moment Prince Violet heard a voice from the skies, as tuneful as the music of the spheres, saying, "Well done, my prince, the death of the wicked enchanter was necessary to the recovery of thy lost gold-fish—for while he lived thou wouldst never have seen it again. Go on—thy destiny ere long will be accomplished." A strain of aerial ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... triple-locking it, he numbered the deniers, renumbered them, gazed long at them with looks of affection, and addressed them in words so soft and sweet, so affable and ingratiating, so gentle and courteous, it seemed rather the music of the spheres ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... the O'Keefe, a new look of power and strength upon his clear-cut features, was gazing down into them with that look which rises only from the heart touched for the first time with that true, all-powerful love, which is the pulse of the universe itself, the real music of the spheres of which Plato dreamed, the love that is stronger than death itself, immortal as the high gods and the true soul of all that ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... keener appreciation of the mediocrity of Port Agnew than others in the little town possessed, a realization that she had more to give to life than life had to give to her. Perhaps it had been merely the restlessness that is the twin of a rare heritage—the music of the spheres—for with such had Nan been born. It is hard to harken for the reedy music of Pan and hear only the whine of a sawmill or ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... occasional visits to Paradise, comes daily to bring three pints of milk from some ambrosial cow; occasionally, also, he makes an offering of mortal flowers. Mr. Emerson comes sometimes, and has been feasted on our nectar and ambrosia. Mr. Thoreau has twice listened to the music of the spheres, which, for our private convenience, we have packed into a musical-box. E. H———, who is much more at home among spirits than among fleshly bodies, came hither a few times merely to welcome us to the ethereal world; but latterly she has vanished into some other ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... going to have—the public makes demand for these. It gets them. Then it cries 'More! More!' Where is the writer who does not think with the printing-press hot upon his track, and the sound of the pulp-mill making paper for his poems, and the buzz of editors, instead of the music of the spheres? Think of the destruction to American forests, the bare and glaring hills that face us day and night, all for a literature like this—thousands of square miles of it, spread before our faces, morning after morning, week after week, ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... as these spheres cannot move on one another without friction, a sound is thereby produced which is of exquisite harmony, too fine for mortal ears to recognize. Milton, in his "Hymn on the Nativity," thus alludes to the music of the spheres: ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... skies, 610 Are but black patches, that she wears, Cut into suns, and moons, and stars: By which astrologers as well, As those in Heav'n above, can tell What strange events they do foreshow 615 Unto her under-world below. Her voice, the music of the spheres, So loud, it deafens mortals ears; As wise philosophers have thought; And that's the cause we hear it not. 620 This has been done by some, who those Th' ador'd in rhime, would kick in prose; And in those ribbons ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... he does, he does systematically. He proceeded in the great work of creation with regularity. Order moulded the planets, and every star that gems the evening sky; it launched them forth in their orbits, and guides their glorious way, producing "the music of the spheres." Order stretched the very layers of the everlasting rocks like ribs around the earth, and shaped the crystals of the cavern. There is order in the structure of every spire of grass, of every flower and shrub, of every tree and trembling leaf; in the mechanism of every ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark |
