Yehudi Menuhin Quotes
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To be an outstanding musician, you have to be very attentive to the smallest detail and willing to have infinite patience in the pursuit of your ideal.
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What guides us is children's response, their joy in learning to dance, to sing, to live together. It should be a guide to the whole world.
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Undoubtedly I had lost time in balking at scales, arpeggios. ... There is an advantage in establishing the top story of one's constructions first: One has seen the heights; one knows what one is building for and what must be sustained.
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We in the Western world have grown to understand matter as imprisoned light, and light as liberated matter, yet this has had no influence on our spiritual thought. In practical terms it only led to the creation of the atom bomb.
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The practice of yoga induces a primary sense of measure and proportion. Reduced to our own body, our first instrument, we learn to play it, drawing from it maximum resonance and harmony.
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Life is not a finished product, it is only what we make of it, and if we make nothing of it, someone else will, and we will be his slave.
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I've had marvelous and incredible luck, and devoted parents, sisters, friends, and teachers. What more can one ask? These things contribute enormously. Probably the major part of one's success is due to these factors.
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In playing Beethoven the violinist should be a medium. There is little that is personal or that can be reduced to ingratiating sounds, pleasing slides and so on. Everything is dictated by the significance, the weight, structure and direction of the notes and passages themselves.
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In all teaching there must be a fusion of authority as an adult providing a stable framework for the children in one's care, and humility as another human being ready to educate an equal who may turn out to be a superior.
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It is music that welds spiritual and sensual, that can convey ecstasy free of guilt, faith without dogma, love as homage, and a person at home with nature and the infinite.
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Why is compassion not part of our established curriculum, an inherent part of our education? Compassion, awe, wonder, curiosity, exaltation, humility - these are the very foundation of any real civilization, no longer the prerogatives, the preserves of any one church, but belonging to everyone, every child in every home, in every school.
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Music is a therapy.It is a communication far more powerful than words, far more immediate, far more efficient.
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Many people do not realise that it takes considerably more art and skill to play the violin lightly than it does to play it loudly. Indeed, the best possible training for young violinists is learning to play pianissimo and without pressure.
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Music lives and breathes to tell us who we are and what we face. It is a path between ourselves and the infinite.
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The ultimate aim in life should be to fulfill to the utmost all that within our ability and to share that which is good and beautiful.
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It is a technique ideally suited to prevent physical and mental illness and to protect the body generally, developing an inevitable sense of self-reliance and assurance.
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In reality, infinity is merely the distance to the heart of a stranger. Eternity is the moment of cognition.
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I still look to music to heal and bind; I still think the musician can be a trusted object offering his fellow-man solace but also a reminder of human excellence.
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A way of life which excludes the realm of the unknown and the mysterious is simply not in harmony with life itself.
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If I wanted to play the violin, I had to work. Because anything that one wants to do really, and one loves doing, one must do everyday. It should be as easy to the artist and as natural as flying is to a bird. And you can’t imagine a bird saying well, I’m tired today, I’m not going to fly!
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Improvisation is not the expression of accident but rather of the accumulated yearnings, dreams and wisdom of our very soul.
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We are living in a world where the individual must learn to command the raw materials of expression. He must not be dependent all the time on the ready-made, the finished product. It's the transferring, the changing of the raw into what is the expression of your own self – the whole joy and satisfaction and frustration of life is built into this.
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It is perhaps life's greatest accomplishment to live to old age, maintaining one's wits, one's sense of humor, one's health, and one's charm.