"The act of conducting in itself, of waving my arms in the air and being in charge, I didn't miss. I missed the sensual pleasure of being in contact with music."

-- Esa-Pekka Salonen

#Air Quotes #Missing Quotes #Sensual Quotes

“The whole purpose of religion is to facilitate love and compassion, patience, tolerance, humility, and forgiveness.”
“My chief aim was to combat the view that there can be no true morality without supernatural sanctions. So I argued at length that the social, or altruistic, impulses are the real source of morality, and that an ethic based on these impulses has far more claim on our allegiance than an ethic based on obedience to the commands of a God who created tapeworms and cancer-cells.”
“The whole world accepts that being stressed is the normal way to live.”
“The less a tourist knows, the fewer mistakes he need make, for he will not expect himself to explain ignorance.”
“Contemporary art is an epoch of false money allied with false culture.”
“When wine drinkers tell me they taste notes of cherries, tobacco and rose petals, usually all I can detect is a whole lot of jackass.”
“I definitely challenge people. But hopefully, I am working harder than anybody else, and so people won't resent the fact that I want them to work hard, as well.”
“In its broad sense, civilization means not only comfort in daily necessities but also the refining of knowledge and the cultivation of virtue so as to elevate human life to a higher plane... It refers to the attainment of both material well-being and the elevation of the human spirit, [but] since what produces man's well-being and refinement is knowledge and virtue, civilization ultimately means the progress of man's knowledge and virtue.”

Source : "An encouragement of learning". Book by Fukuzawa Yukichi and Obata Tokujirō, 1872-1876.

You may also like:

Dmitri Shostakovich
Composer
Gustav Mahler
Composer
Hilary Hahn
Violinist
Igor Stravinsky
Composer
Jean Sibelius
Composer
Leila Josefowicz
Violinist
Simon Rattle
Conductor
Witold LutosÅ‚awski
Composer
Kaija Saariaho
Composer