36 Quotes by Sidney Lanier

I am but a small-winged bird:But I will conquer the big worldAs the bee-martin beats the crowBy attacking it always from Above.

Virtues are acquired through endeavor, which rests wholly upon yourself.

Music is love in search of a word.

If you want to be found stand where the seeker seeks.

If a man made himself an expert in any particular branch of human activity, there would result the strong tendency that a peculiar aptitude towards the same branch would be found among some of his descendants.

Gradually I find that my whole soul is merging itself into this business of writing, and especially of writing poetry. I am going to try it; and am going to test, in the most rigid way I know, the awful question whether it is my vocation.

I have frequently noticed in myself a tendency to a diffuse style; a disposition to push my metaphors too far, employing a multitude of words to heighten the patness of the image, and so making of it a conceit rather than a metaphor, a fault copiously illustrated in the poetry of Cowley, Waller, Donne, and others of that ilk.

But I cannot bring myself to believe that I was intended for a musician, because it seems so small a business in comparison with other things which, it seems to me, I might do. Question here: 'What is the province of music in the economy of the world?

Many students felt violated by what happened. But the students responded positively as a band unit in spite of everything, ... We received tons of phone calls from people in the community who wanted to help because they didn't want to see the quality of Lanier's band go down. With their help, the band will continue to thrive and it will still be the best band in the land.