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Awards are merely the badges of mediocrity.

Charles Ives

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Charles Ives
Age: 79 †
Born: 1874
Born: October 20
Died: 1954
Died: May 19
Actuary
Composer
Musician
Danbury
Connecticut
Charles Edward Ives
Badges
Mediocrity
Awards
Merely

More quotes by Charles Ives

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My God! What has sound got to do with music?
Charles Ives
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For the man of talent affects to call his transgressions of the laws of sense trivial and to count them nothing considerd with his devotion to his art.
Charles Ives
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An apparent confusion, if lived with long enough, may become orderly . . . A rare experience of a moment at daybreak, when something in nature seems to reveal all consciousness, cannot be explained at noon. Yet it is part of the day's unity
Charles Ives
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If a composer has a nice wife and some nice children, how can he let the children starve on his dissonances?
Charles Ives
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Every great inspiration is but an experiment.
Charles Ives
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The possibilities of percussion sounds, I believe, have never been fully realized
Charles Ives
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Vagueness is at times an indication of nearness to a perfect truth.
Charles Ives
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Expression, to a great extent, is a matter of terms, and terms are anyone's.
Charles Ives
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If a poet knows more about a horse than he does about heaven, he might better stick to the horse, and some day the horse may carry him into heaven.
Charles Ives
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Expression, to a great extent, is a matter of terms, and terms are anyone's. The meaning of 'God' may have a billion interpretations if there be that many souls in the world
Charles Ives
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All melodious poets shall be hoarse as street ballads, when once the penetrating keynote of nature and spirit is sounded-the earth-beat, sea-beat, heart-beat, which make the tune to which the sun rolls, and the globule of blood and the sap of the trees.
Charles Ives
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The word 'beauty' is as easy to use as the word 'degenerate.' Both come in handy when one does or does not agree with you
Charles Ives
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A song has a few rights the same as ordinary citizens... if it happens to feel like flying where humans cannot fly... to scale mountains that are not there, who shall stop it?
Charles Ives
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Everyone should have the opportunity of not being over-influenced.
Charles Ives
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Please don't try to make things nice! All the wrong notes are right. Just copy as I have -- I want it that way.
Charles Ives
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Stand up and take your dissonance like a man.
Charles Ives
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There can be nothing exclusive about substantial art. It comes directly out of the heart of the experience of life and thinking about life and living life.
Charles Ives
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But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense.
Charles Ives
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The fabric of existence weaves itself whole.
Charles Ives
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It is conceivable that what is unified form to the author or composer may of necessity be formless to his audience.
Charles Ives