There is one thing that freezes a musician more than the deadliest physical cold, and that is the spiritual chill of an unresponsive audience!

I think that the quality of all bands is steadily improving and it is a pleasant thought to me that perhaps the efforts of Sousa's Band have quickened that interest and improved that quality.

America can well expect to develop a goodly amount of composers for she has a goodly number of people.

Any composer who is gloriously conscious that he is a composer must believe that he receives his inspiration from a source higher than himself.

From childhood I was passionately fond of music and wanted to be a musician. I have no recollection of any real desire ever to be anything else.

Is it not the business of the conductor to convey to the public in its dramatic form the central idea of a composition; and how can he convey that idea successfully if he does not enter heart and soul into the life of the music and the tale it unfolds?

I still feel the impulse to give young writers a hearing, and I believe I have played more unpublished compositions than any other band leader in the country.

Anybody can write music of a sort. But touching the public heart is quite another thing.

There is one thing that freezes a musician more than the deadliest physical cold, and that is the spiritual chill of an unresponsive audience!

I am happy now, to recall that I was no only his son but his companion, and whenever there was a hunting expedition or any other pleasure, I was always with him.

Remember always that the composer's pen is still mightier than the bow of the violinist; in you lie all the possibilities of the creation of beauty.

Sincere composers believe in God.

My religion lies in my composition.

The average music-lover hears only the production under prevailing conditions.

Grand opera is the most powerful of stage appeals and that almost entirely through the beauty of music.

The movements which I make I cannot possibly repress because, at the time, I am actually the idea I am interpreting, and naturally I picture my players and auditors as in accord with me. I know, of course, that my mannerisms have been widely discussed.

I had found English audiences highly satisfactory. They are the best listeners in the world. Perhaps the music-lovers of some of our larger cities equal the English, but I do not believe they can be surpassed in that respect.

I firmly believe that we have more latent musical talent in America than there is in any other country. But to dig it out there must be good music throughout the land, a lot of it. Everyone must hear it, and such a process takes time.

I have always believed that 98% of a student's progress is due to his own efforts, and 2% to his teacher.

No nation as young as America can be expected to become immediately a power in the arts.

I can almost always write music; at any hour of the twenty-four, if I put pencil to paper, music comes.

My success is not due to any personal superiority over other people.

Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.

The office of President is a great one; to every true American it seems the greatest on earth. And to me, as I was engaged in weaving a background of music for the pageantry of it, there came a deeper realization of the effect of that office on the man.

There is much modern music that is better adapted to a wind combination than to a string, although for obvious reasons originally scored for an orchestra. If in such cases the interpretation is equal to the composition the balance of a wind combination is more satisfying.

American teachers have one indisputable advantage over foreign ones; they understand the American temperament and can judge its unevenness, its lights and its shadows.

To the average mind popular music would mean compositions vulgarly conceived and commonplace in their treatment. That is absolutely false.

Composers are the only people who can hear good music above bad sounds.

Governmental aid is a drawback rather than an assistance, as, although it may facilitate in the routine of artistic production, it is an impediment to the development of true artistic genius.

I am happy now, to recall that I was not only his son but his companion, and whenever there was a hunting expedition or any other pleasure, I was always with him.

Remember always that the composers pen is still mightier than the bow of the violinist in you lie all the possibilities of the creation of beauty.

Fight the good fight of faith, and God will give you spiritual mercies.

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.

Be unselfish. That is the first and final commandment for those who would be useful and happy in their usefulness. If you think of yourself only, you cannot develop because you are choking the source of development, which is spiritual expansion through thought for others.

Organized Christianity has always represented immortality as a sort of common heritage; but I never could see why spiritual life should not be conditioned on the same terms as all life, i. e., correspondence with environment.

It's a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

I found a religion that blended scientific reason with spiritual reality in a unifying faith far removed from the headlines of violence, destruction and terrorism.

My hates have always occupied my mind much more actively and have given greater spiritual satisfactions than my friendships.

Maybe I'm being philosophical and spiritual, but I believe that if you put negative energy out there that that is what will come back.

It makes a difference what we choose to experience during sleep. Many of us think of sleep as a chance to get away from it all. But sleep is also a chance to return to the joys of our spiritual heritage - our universal awareness.

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.

Intuition is a spiritual faculty and does not explain, but simply points the way.

A Christian has no right being in a fight unless it's a spiritual fight.

When asked if I consider myself Buddhist, the answer is, Not really. But it's more my religion than any other because I was brought up with it in an intellectual and spiritual environment. I don't practice or preach it, however.

Krishna children were taught that in the spiritual world there were no parents, only souls and hence this justified their being kept out of view from others, cloistered in separate buildings and sheltered from the evil material world.

This same habitual blindness to spiritual, substantive dimensions of every significant challenge continues to handicap Hollywood.

Marriage is not just spiritual communion, it is also remembering to take out the trash.

I've found a more personal, pagan kind of religion to satisfy the spiritual side of things.

Perhaps, once I am gone, the one thing I might be remembered for is having sung a great deal of Mahler with a great many phenomenal conductors. It is wonderful music, very spiritual.