Lute Quotes

I never learned how to tune a harp, or play upon a lute; but I know how to raise a small and inconsiderable city to glory and greatness. (Themistocles)
He stops, looks up at this window, and I can see the white oblong of his face. We look at each other. I have no rose to toss, he has no lute. But it's the same kind of hunger.
Margaret Atwood
When you are accompanied by the instrument - on an instrument like the lute-the lute and voice - you have this sound, and you feel how the music can be so touching and yet so simple.
Cecilia Bartoli
Better a dish of husks to the accompaniment of a muted lute than to be satiated with stewed shark's fin and rich spiced wine of which the cost is frequently mentioned by the provider.
Ernest Bramah
At daybreak I found on my sculptor's turntable a little mischievous form [a small plaster form of Impish Form, Arp made in 1949], alert and somewhat obese, with a stomach like a lute. It seemed to me like an imp. I called it that. And all of a sudden one day this little character, this imp, through a Venezuelan medium, found itself to be the father of a giant [Arp enlarged it]. This giant son resembles its father like an egg resembles another egg, a fig another fig, a bell another bell.
Jean Arp
To drift with every passion till my soul Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play, Is it for this that I have given away Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control? Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll Scrawled over on some boyish holiday With idle songs for pipe and virelay, Which do but mar the secret of the whole.
Oscar Wilde
If thou would'st have me sing and play As once I play'd and sung, First take this time-worn lute away, And bring one freshly strung.
Thomas Moore
I give thee all,-I can no more, Though poor the off'ring be; My heart and lute are all the store That I can bring to thee.
Thomas Moore
My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me that the lamp which I carry does not belong to me, and the song that I sing was not generated from within me. Even if I walk with light, I am not the light; and if I am a taut-stringed lute, I am not the lute player.
Kahlil Gibran
in my opinion if you have a secret compartment in your lute case and don't use it to hide things, there is something terribly, terribly wrong with you.
Patrick Rothfuss
My lute, be as thou wert when thou didst grow With thy green mother in some shady grove, When immelodious winds but made thee move, And birds their ramage did on thee bestow. (William Drummond of Hawthornden)
He stood beside a cottage lone And listened to a lute, One summer's eve, when the breeze was gone, And the nightingale was mute.
Thomas Kibble Hervey
Nearby.... are monsters personifying Pestilence and Famine, those inseparable partners of War. On the ground, turning her back, lies a woman with a broken lute representing Harmony... [T]here is also a mother with a child in her arms indicating that fecundity, procreation and charity are thwarted by War, which corrupts and destroys everything.
Peter Paul Rubens
The Christian missionary orchestra in India after independence has continued to rise from one crescendo to another with the applause of the Nehruvian establishment manned by a brood of self-alienated Hindus spawned by missionary-macaulayite education. The only rift in the lute has been K. M. Panikkar's Asia and Western Dominance published in 1953, the Report of the Christian Missionary Activities Committee Madhya Pradesh published in 1956, Om Prakash Tyagi's Bill on Freedom of Religion introduced in the Lok Sabha in 1978, Arun Shourie's Missionaries in India published in 1994 and the Maharashtra Freedom of Religion Bill introduced in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly by Mangal Prabhat Lodha, M. L. A. on 20 December 1996.
Sita Ram Goel
Sweet in her green dell the flower of beauty slumbers, Lull'd by the faint breezes sighing through her hair; Sleeps she and hears not the melancholy numbers Breathed to my sad lute 'mid the lonely air.
George Darley
Being the lion in the lute Before the lion locked in stone.
Wallace Stevens
It is the little rift within the lute, That by and by will make the music mute, And ever widening slowly silence all.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
They say that, hung in ancient halls, At midnight from the silent lute A melancholy music falls From chords which were by daylight mute. And so the human heart by night Is touched by some inspired tone, Harmonious in the deep delight, By day it knew not was its own.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
I never saw more perfect loveliness. It ask'd, it had no aid from dress: her robe Was white, and simply gather'd in such folds As suit a statue: neck and arms were bare; The black hair was unbound, and like a veil Hung even to her feet; she held a lute, And, as she paced the ancient gallery, waked A few wild chords, and murmur'd low sweet words, But scarcely audible, as if she thought Rather than spoke:-the night, the solitude, Fill'd the young Pythoness with poetry.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
It was my evil star above, Not my sweet lute, that wrought me wrong; It was not song that taught me love, But it was love that taught me song.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
He enter'd now the garden, and a fall Of singing, voice and lute, sank on his ear : At first it seem'd thrice sweet and musical, But it grew sadder as he came more near. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon)
Such as the lute, touch'd by no hand Save by an angel's, wakes and weeps, Such is the sound that now to land From the charmed water sweeps.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
And when the reckless crowd among I speak of one sweet art, How lightly can I name the song, Which yet has wrung my heart! That lute and heart alike have chords Not to be spoken of in words.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
-music's power Is little felt in sunlit hour; But hear its voice when hopes depart, Like swallows, flying from the heart On which the summer's late decline Has set a sadness and a sign;. . . . . . How deeply will the spirit feel The lute, the song's sweet-voiced appeal; And how the heart drink in their sighs As echoes they from Paradise.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
And then the lute, the lattice, and the girl, The white rose, and the melancholy song - Oh, Night, thy reign is over lovely things ! -.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon