Saturday, March 27, 2010

The Light of Eternal Love

And I press on with a lighter heart
Through all the ways of the endless rings.
The pure word of the living God
Moves in the depths of them and sings.

Unhampered now by fierce desire
We follow and find no ending here
Till in the light of eternal Love
We melt, we disappear.

-- Johann Wolfgang van Goethe
(in The Book of Uncommon Prayer,
edited by Constance and Daniel Pollack)

Saturday, March 20, 2010


Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.

-- Victor Hugo
(in Music Lovers Quotations,
edited by Helen Exley)

Saturday, March 13, 2010


Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.

-- Thomas Carlyle
(in Music: A Book of Quotations,
edited by Herb Galewitz)

Saturday, March 6, 2010


The song of the flute, O sister, is madness.
I thought that nothing that was not God could hold me,
But hearing that sound, I lose mind and body,
My heart wholly caught in the net.
O flute, what were your vows, what is your practice?
What power sits by your side?
Even Mira's Lord is trapped in Your seven notes.

-- Mirabai
(in Women in Praise of the Sacred,
edited by Jane Hirshfield)