"A thousand trills and quivering sounds In airy circles o'er us fly, Till, wafted by a gentle breeze, They faint and languish by degrees, And at a distance die."

"A noise like of a hidden brook In the leafy month of June, That to the sleeping woods all night Singeth a quiet tune."

"Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds, At which the universal host up sent A shout that tore hell's concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night."

"All music is just performances of 4'33" in studios where another band happened to be playing at the time."

"Doctor: It plays music. What's the point of that? Oh, with music, you can dance to it, sing with it, fall in love to it. Unless you're a Dalek of course. Then it's all just noise."

"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 we come down to the other end of this great gamut, to very slow vibrations, we shall find a certain number so slow as to affect the heavy matter of the atmosphere to strike upon the tympanum of our ear and reach us as sound there may be, and there must be, an infinity of sounds which are too high or too low for the human ear to respond to them; and to all such sounds, of which there must be millions and millions, the human ear is absolutely deaf. If there be vibrations so slow that they appear to vs as sound, and other exceedingly rapid ones which appear as light, what are all the others? Assuredly there are vibrations of all intermediate rates We have them as electrical phenomena of various kinds; we have them as the Rontgen rays. In fact, the whole secret of the Rontgen rays, or X-rays, is simply the bringing within the capacity of our eyes and within the field of our vision a few more rays, a few of the finer rates of vibration, which normally would be out of our reach"

"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."

"I have for a long time been of opinion that the quantity of noise anyone can comfortably endure is in inverse proportion to his mental powers, and may therefore be regarded as a rough estimate of them. Therefore, when I hear dogs barking unchecked for hours in the courtyard of a house, I know what to think of the mental powers of the inhabitants. The man who habitually slams doors instead of shutting them with the hand, or allows this to be done in his house, is not merely ill-mannered, but also coarse and narrow-minded."

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

"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:"

"Trust your ears: Meters and scopes are tools, but if it sounds right in context, it probably is. Let what you hear guide you more than any readout."

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

"Now I will do nothing but listen, To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it."

"Carpenters' and ironworkers' shops are dominated by the heavier sounds of machinery and occasional yells across the floor; in goldsmiths' shops the silences are punctuated by more delicate work noises, but the apprentices' sullen silence and the artisans' grim absorption in the work at hand are, if anything, more oppressive, although there may be a little amiable banter between a master goldsmith and an older apprentice clearly already in possession of advanced technical skills."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"No question is ever settled Until it is settled right."

"Old rights must remain: it would be very unreasonable if it should be otherwise."

"A pretensed right is no right at all."

"All Nature is but art unknown to thee; All chance direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good; And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, One truth is clear, Whatever is is right."

"Every man has by the law of nature a right to such a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his subsistence."

"The practice of democracy has the notorious tendency to become paradoxical. [...] Democracy inspires ideas of rights but allows the taming of rights for purposes of order."

"It shall not be in the power of any man, by his election, to vary the rights of two other contending parties."

"Reparation for our rights at home, and security against the like future violations."

"Let us have faith that Right makes Might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it."

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right."

"Mensuraque juris Vis erat."

"We hold these truths to be self-evident,—that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

"By the laws of England, there can be no special right, no particular interest or privilege whatever, of perpetual duration, but such as have respect to some kind of inheritance."

"All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights."

"For the ultimate notion of right is that which tends to the universal good; and when one's acting in a certain manner has this tendency he has a right thus to act."

"May it be to the world, what I believe it will be. To some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all, the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessing and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights. and an undiminished devotion to them."

"The rule of the road is a parodox quite, If you drive with a whip or a thong; If you go to the left you are sure to be right, If you go to the right you are wrong."

"For right is right, since God is God, And right the day must win; To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin."

"Wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or complexion."

"Be sure you are right, then go ahead."

"Sir, I would rather be right than be President."

"He will hew to the line of right, let the chips fly where they may."