Quotes for Dancers & Women

Art / Artists

 

"Great art is never perfect; perfect art is never great." -Edward Abbey

You must be nothing but an ear that hears what the universe of the world is constantly saying within you. - Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritch

The purpose of art is not a rarified, intellectual distillate—it is life, intensified, brilliant life. - Alain Arias Misson

We are artists because we are ourselves. - Anne Truitt

‘A poet’s work...To name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.” - Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“If you take any activity, any art, any discipline, any skill, take it and push it as far as it will go, push it beyond where it has ever been before, push it to the wildest edge of edges, then you force it into the realm of magic. And it doesn’t matter what it is that you select, because when it has been pushed far enough it contains everything else. - Tom Robbins; Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

An artist is not there to be at one with the world, he is there to transform it. - Anaïs Nin

For an artist there is great value in being invisible. Only when you can stop looking at yourself do you become capable of filling other bodies. - Gail Godwin

Form is the visible shape of content. - Ben Shahn, 1957.

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life - Pablo Picasso

The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is. - Willa Cather

The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill. - W. Somerset Maugham

The most vigilant self-criticism of course is necessary, but the time comes when the artist must tell himself he is good or he will go under. - Gerald Moor

The real risks for any artist are taken...in pushing the work to the limits of what is possible, in the attempt to increase the sum of what it is possible to think. Books become good when they go to this edge and risk falling over it--when they endanger the artist by reason of what he has, or has not, artistically dared.
Salman Rushdie

The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are. - Oscar Wilde

 

Beauty

Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. - Gibran

All the movements are centered around the belly, the creative center for human beings. All human life begins in the belly. - Delilah

For some of us, including me, it takes a radical shift in consciousness to accept the idea that we are "OK" as is. And that we have, not just the right, but a responsibility, to share our uniqueness with the world.
- Pat Stricklin

Nowhere else have I experienced an environment where women actively support each other in shining fully, without guilt. - Pat Stricklin

The soft belly is the primary foundation for opening to this level of being. For it is in the belly that we have so long attempted to control the world. It is the nature of the belly to turn the whole world into itself—all that we take in as food from the outside is converted to the body from the inside. It is the nature of the stomach to turn the world into itself. Indeed, we live in a culture which holds its belly in, which tightens the abdomen for appearances and some imagined strength. The belly is our center of control and holds much tension. Baby’s belly is soft; Buddha’s belly is soft.- Stephen Levine, Healing into Life and Death

"This dance is so simple. The music says something to the dancer, and the dancer shows that to the audience." - Ibrahim Farrah’s definition of Middle Eastern dance

The beauty of artistic expression of sensuality is one of the most moving and powerful elements of this dance and a path to ecstasy -Natasya K.

Beside the fire, as the wood burns black, A laughing dancer in veils of light, Whose dance transforms the darkness to gold. - Abu Abd Allah ben Abi-l-Khisal

Life is like a ghaziya, she dances just briefly for each. -Egyptian proverb

 

Bellydance

All the movements are centered around the belly, the creative center for human beings. All human life begins in the belly. - Delilah

For some of us, including me, it takes a radical shift in consciousness to accept the idea that we are "OK" as is. And that we have, not just the right, but a responsibility, to share our uniqueness with the world.
- Pat Stricklin

Nowhere else have I experienced an environment where women actively support each other in shining fully, without guilt. - Pat Stricklin

The soft belly is the primary foundation for opening to this level of being. For it is in the belly that we have so long attempted to control the world. It is the nature of the belly to turn the whole world into itself—all that we take in as food from the outside is converted to the body from the inside. It is the nature of the stomach to turn the world into itself. Indeed, we live in a culture which holds its belly in, which tightens the abdomen for appearances and some imagined strength. The belly is our center of control and holds much tension.
Baby’s belly is soft; Buddha’s belly is soft. - Stephen Levine, Healing into Life and Death

This dance is so simple. The music says something to the dancer, and the dancer shows that to the audience. - Ibrahim Farrah’s definition of Middle Eastern dance

The beauty of artistic expression of sensuality is one of the most moving and powerful elements of this dance and a path to ecstasy -Natasya K.

Beside the fire, as the wood burns black, A laughing dancer in veils of light, Whose dance transforms the darkness to gold. - Abu Abd Allah ben Abi-l-Khisal

Life is like a ghaziya, she dances just briefly for each. -Egyptian proverb

 

Canny

 

A closed mind is still the most effective form of censorship around.
- Susan G. Cole, Herizons, Fall '96

Women speak because they wish to speak, whereas a man speaks only when driven to speech by something outside himself--like, for instance, he can't find any clean socks. - Jean Kerr

Creativity

You may stop pursuing the dream than, until you realize that this work is a unique creation, unlike any other one you or anyone else has ever attempted, and so it may take a little longer. In fact, your dream may take a lot longer. Yet that’s no reason to quit. If anything, it’s the reason you need to get right back to work.
— Suzanne Falter-Barnes, How Much Joy Can You Stand

Of course, mistakes are an important point of the process as well. … Yet the beautiful thing is that those mistakes are usually guided, too. They’re simply point of the creative journey. … If you surrender to the process fully, the mistakes simply become point of the work….
— Suzanne Falter-Barnes, How Much Joy Can You Stand

This is not ours, this thing we have created; it’s divine work that has been put in our hands. — Suzanne Falter-Barnes, How Much Joy Can You Stand

Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity . . . any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better. - John Updike

Play is a priority - fundamental to life and survival. Dr. Ellie Katz feels that re-learning how to play not only increases your creativity, imagination, and intuition, it also brings more joy into your life.
- Dr Katz

In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love? - Igor Stravinsky

Creativity is a selfless act, demanding that you give of yourself simply for the sheer love of giving. We cannot give our work to the world expecting any kind of reward. That this simple act requires courage is merely creativity’s gift to us in return. — Suzanne Falter-Barnes, How Much Joy Can You Stand

 

Dance

Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts. Because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself. - - Havelock Ellis

The material for the dance is air, the movement is breath, and the source is love. - Unknown

Nothing is more revealing than movement. - Unknown

The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word. - Unknown

Dance is a delicate balance between perfection and freedom. - Unknown

Dance is life at its most glorious moment. - Unknown

The dance — it is the rhythm of all that dies in order to live again; it is the eternal rising of the sun. - Unknown

The dancer ought to be light as a flame. - Unknown

Dancing is like robbing a bank. It takes split second timing. - Unknown

Dancing is silent poetry. - Unknown

Those move easiest who have learned to dance. - Unknown

A time to weep, and a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time to dance. - Unknown

Dancing is a measured pace. - Unknown

As the drum beats, so goes the dance. - Unknown

Those who dance are thought mad by those who hear not the music. - Unknown

I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. - Unknown

Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart. - Unknown

[Dancing is] the poetry of the foot. - Unknown

Dance is the only art wherein we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made. - Unknown

Beauty is truth, truth beauty — Keats

When man expresses the inexpressible, he does so on the wings of song. — William Blake

To the universe belongs the dancer; whoever does not dance does not know what happens! — Jesus from the Gnostic Gospels, Acts of John.

Dancing, the child of Music and of Love. — Sir John Davies

When you do dance, I wish you
A wave o’ the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that.
- Shakespeare, A Winter’s Tale, Act IV, Sc 4

But O! she dances in such a way,
No sun upon an Easter day
Is half so fine a sight.
-Sir John Suckling

And beautiful maidens moved down in the dance
with the magic of motion and sunshine of glance
- Whittier

‘Twas surely the devil that taught women to dance.
- Thomas Fuller

“We can learn how to move through our lives with fearless autonomy, grace and spirit; to flow with the melody line, be in the stillness or ride the chaos; to overcome the fear that puts us on the sidelines. We can learn to listen to the voice in our head that says, 'I CAN DANCE!' "
- Delilah

"To the universe belongs the dancer; whoever does not dance does not know what happens!"
- Jesus, the Gnostic Gospels, Acts of John.

She dazzles like the dawn, and comforts like the night. - Charles Baudelaire

What a countenance! What spirited beauty! It could even set ice on fire! - Lope de Vega

Any true music speaks with this universal mind to this universal mind in all people. - Bill Evans

In music and dance we soon become very aware of this world alive with gods and goddesses. - Gunther Schuller, Pulitzer Prize winner for music.

Improvisation is the courage to move from one note to the next. - Bobby McFerrin

Our fear of performing is profoundly related to fear of foolishness, which has two parts: fear of being thought a fool (loss of reputation) and fear of actually being a fool (fear of unusual states of mind).
- Stephen Nachmanovich

Dancing is the body made poetic. - Ernst Bacon

The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie. - Agnes De Mille

Movements are as eloquent as words. - Isadora Duncan

"Don't just do something, stand there!" --Martha Graham.

If you're walking on thin ice
you might as well dance...
- Barb Stone

Let that day be lost to us on which we did not dance once! - Friedrich Nietzsche

Grace was in all her steps, Heav’n in her Eye,
In every gesture dignity and love - John Milton, Paradise Lost

May our dance always be a bridge to understanding.
May our dance always be a celebration of diversity.
May our dance always be an instrument for peace.
(Laurel Victoria Gray)

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. - Friedrich Nietzsche

I could only believe in a god who could dance.... And now a god dances through me. -Nietzche

"You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you
nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no
paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums,
no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that
fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for
unsteady souls." -Merce Cunningham

"The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs
through the world and dances in rhythmic measures..." unknown

Dance is a song of the body-- Martha Graham

"I don't want people who want to dance, I want people who *have* to dance." --George Balanchine

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. - Henry David Thoreau

Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. - Robert Fulghum

Dance is about never-ending aspiration. -Judith Jamison, US modern dancer

Dance is the hidden language of the soul. - Martha Graham

God creates, I do not create. I assemble and I steal everywhere to do it from what I see, from what the dancers can do, from what others do. - George Balanchine (1904 - 1983) Russian choreographer

He who is unable to dance says the yard is stony. - Kenyan Proverb

I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to to dance better than myself.
Mikhail Baryshnikov, Latvian-US ballet dancer

I have no desire to prove anything by dancing. I have never used it as an outlet or a means of expressing myself. I just dance. I just put my feet in the air and move them around.
Fred Astaire, (1899 - 1987) US dancer, actor

If I can't dance, I don't want your revolution! - Emma Goldman

May our dance always be a bridge to understanding.
May our dance always be a celebration of diversity.
May our dance always be an instrument for peace.
Laurel Victoria Gray

May our dance be a conduit for its healing energies.
May our dance always be an expression of its inherent
joy & love for all humankind.
Morocco (Carolina Varga Dinicu)

While I dance I cannot judge, I cannot hate, I cannot separate myself from life. I can only be joyful and whole. That is why I dance. -Hans Bos

...The moment one knows how, one begins to die a little. Living is a form of not being sure, of not knowing what next or how.....One leaps in the dark! -Agnes Demille, Dance Choreographer

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time this expression is unique. And if you block it it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. -Martha Graham

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance? -William Butler Yeats

Dancing's not work. You can't call it work. A day I don't dance is a day I don't live. - From Serpent of the Nile, Wendy Buonaventura

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.
---Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

The art of dancing stands at the source of all the arts that express themselves first in the human person. The art of building, or architecture, is the beginning of all the arts that lie outside the person; and in the end they unite.... Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no more translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.
---Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life

Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education: dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?
---Friedrich Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols, Things the Germans Lack

Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youthful Jollity,
Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles,
Nods and Becks and wreathe`d Smiles....
Sport, that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides,
Come, and trip it, as you go,
On the light fantastic toe.
---John Milton, L'Allegro

When you do dance, I wish you
A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that.
---William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale

Don't just do something, stand there! --Martha Graham.

“Form is the visible shape of content.”
- Ben Shahn, 1957.

The Indian concept that man was created so that God could behold himself (or herself) ...presents a magnificent image of humans as empty molds for God to pour consciousness into. When man expresses the inexpressible, he does so on the wings of song.
- William Blake

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.
Lord Byron

We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life. This is the function of the American dance.
Martha Graham

It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind; but when a beginning is made--when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt--it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.
Jane Austen

* Dancing is a wonderful training for girls, it's the first way you learn to guess what a man is going to do before he does it.
Christopher Morley

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
William Woodsworth

 

Inspirational

Only the gentle are ever really strong. - James Dean

Strong convictions precede great actions - JF Clarke

The art of becoming wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. - William James

Nothing is impossible to a willing heart. -Unknown

It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts - Coach J Wooden

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. - Derek Bok

No man can help another without helping himself - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Act as if it were impossible to fail - Dorothea Broude

You miss 100% of the shots you never take - Wayne Gretzky

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory. - WE Deming

Nothing pains some people more than having to think. - Martin Luther King, Jr

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought - Henri Bergson

To measure a man, measure his heart. - Unknown

I destroy my enemy when I make him my friend. - Abraham Lincoln

Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. - Abraham Lincoln

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle. - Benjamin Franklin

Confidence is the companion of success. - Unknown

In life, as in chess, fore-thought wins. - Buxton

Diligence is the mother of good luck. - Benjamin Franklin

Glory doth follow: courage goes before. - S. Daniel

Who dares nothing, need hope for nothing. - J. Vonschiller

No one ever achieved greatness by playing it safe. - Harry Gray

The road to success is always under construction. - Jim Miller

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. - Helen Keller

The most important thing about having a goal is having one. - Geoffrey F. Abert

Self-trust is the first secret of success. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Never, never, never give up. - Unknown

When we have done our best, we should wait the result in peace. - J. Lubbock

Never mistake motion for action. - Ernest Hemingway

If you don’t make mistakes, why aren’t really trying. - Coleman Hawking

Opportunity is missed because it is dressed in overalls, and looks like work. - Thomas A. Edison

The secret of success is constancy of purpose. - Benjamin Franklin

Practice is the best of all instructors. - Unknown

Champions know that the best way to forecast the future is to create it. - Michael J Gelb

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. - Elbert Hubbard

You begin by always expecting good things to happen. - Unknown

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance. - Confucius.

Practice random acts of kindness and senseless beauty. - Unknown

Well done is better than well said. - Benjamin Franklin

Never underestimate the power of a good heart and a special prayer. - Unknown

A man is measured by the size of the things that anger him. - Geof Greenleaf

Nothing is more common than unfulfilled potential. - Howard Hendricks

It isn’t smart to argue with a fool; listeners can’t tell which is which. -Unknown

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs. - Henry Ford

If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you have never done. - P. Aaron

The reason angels can fly is because they take themselves so lightly. - GK Chesterton

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
- .Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

You have every right to be free
You have every right to be who you are
Don't let anyone take that away from you
- Kebo Drew

And I am here to say that we are all gods and goddesses, each and every one of us.- RuPaul, Lettin It All Hang Out

There’s a point, around age twenty…when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.- Urula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed

...What had taken him over was the will to live, unadulterated, irresistible, pure, and the first thing it did was to inform him that it wanted nothing to do with his pathetic personality, that half-reconstructed affair of mimicry and voices, it intended to bypass all that, and he found himself surrendering to it, yes, go on, as if he were a bystander in his own mind, in his own body, because it began in the very centre of his body and spread outwards, ...
— Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

It is the path you do not fear that the wild beast catches you on. — African proverb

Le couer a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point. [The heart has reasons that reason doesn’t know.]
-A Wrinkle in Time

To live fully, one must be free, but to be free one must give up security. Therefore, to live one must be ready to die. — Robbins; Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Life is the question, and you, yourself, are the answer. —Ursula LeGuin, Very Far Away From Anywhere Else

Each small task of everyday life is part of the total harmony of the universe. —St Theresa of Lisieux

They say there is nothing new under any sun. But if each life is not new, each single life, then why are we born? — Urula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed

Those who say something cannot be done should not interupt those who are doing it. — Chinese proverb

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction. - Betty Anderson Stanley

Where there is great love there are always miracles. — Willa Cather

Always remember… you are smarter than you think, stronger than you feel, and braver than you believe. —“Christopher Robin” (the New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh movie…)

Success is not found in what you have achieved but rather in who you have become. -Unknown

Someone who loves what they're doing is very different from someone who wants you to love them for what they're doing. - Anon.

If you would save the planet, begin by honoring and loving yourself. — Jalaja Bonheim

"Proudly marching to the beat of a different kettle of fish."
- Laurie Olson Williams

Do not follow where the path may lead,
go instead where there is no path
and leave a trail. - Anon.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost;
there is where they should be. Now put foundations under them. — Henry David Thoreau

Great spirits always encounter violent opposition from mediocre minds. — Albert Einstein

The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Each time you judge yourself, you break your heart. - Kirpal Venanji, Hindu monk

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. — Anaïs Nin

Only the gentle are ever really strong. —James Dean

Never be diverted from the truth by what you would like to believe. — M. Rogan

Never forget, honey, the world is your oyster and YOU are the pearl. — Minikin

We need new words
for what this is, this hunger entering our
loneliness like birds, stunning our eyes into rays
of hope. we need the flutter that can save
us, something that will swirl across the face
of what we have become and bring us grace. —Lucille Clifton, Blake

We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by
embracing one another. -Luciano de Crescenzo

I don't recognize the concept of risk. Risk is defined as, "the possibility of harm or loss," (American Heritage Dictionary) but if no risk is taken, then there is a possibility that something that might have been gained will be lost. So if there is no risk taken, then the possibility of loss occurs and the definition becomes paradoxical and meaningless. - Rhoda

"Man spends his whole life running from feeling,
with the mistaken belief that you cannot bear the pain.
But you have already borne the pain;
What you have not done
is to feel all that you are beyond the pain" —Bartholomew
(meditation from May 11, The Color Of Light)

Security is mostly superstition. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable. —Helen Keller

I rescued hundreds of slaves.
I could have rescued thousands,
if they had known they were slaves.
- Harriet Tubman

The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose. - Hada Bejar

"Oppression is not only evil, it is blasphemous because it causes the oppressed to doubt that they are children of God." Nelson Mandella

O Divine Mother
May all my speech and idle talk be mantra
all actions of my hands be mudra
all eating and drinking be the offerings
of oblations unto Thee
all lying down prostrations before Thee
may all pleasures be as dedicating my entire self unto Thee
May everything I do be taken as Thy worship
— Swami Radha?

If you are filled with fear, refill yourself with faith, for faith always overcomes fear.
— Ernest Holmes,

There are no excuses for anything. You change things or you don’t. Excuses rob you of power and induce apathy. - Lynn Anderson, Jaguar Woman

You were right the first time.
— Liesa Noonan.

It has always been difficult for Man to realize that his life is all an art. It has been more difficult to conceive it so than to act it so. For that is always how he has more or less acted it. — Havelock Ellis

Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things
to them. — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential
is invisible to the eye. — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Neither intelligence nor judgment are creative. If a sculptor is nothing
but science and intelligence his hands will have no talent. — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

In anything at all, perfection is finally attained, not when there is no
longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything
to take away. — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do. — James Harvey Robinson

Distance doesn't matter: it is only the first step that is difficult. - Marie Anne du Deffand

Genius is another word for magic, and the whole point of magic is that it is inexplicable.
Margot Fonteyn, English dancer

I learned 3 important things in college -- to use a library, to memorize quickly and visually, to drop asleep any time given a horizontal surface and 15 minutes. What I could not learn was to think creatively on schedule. - Agnes George DeMille,US dancer, choreographer

I wasn't concerned about the hardships, because I always felt I was doing what I had to do, what I wanted to do and what I was destined to do. - Katherine Dunham, US dancer, choreographer, anthropologist

If you take any activity, any art, any discipline, any skill, take it and push it as far as it will go, push it beyond where it has ever been before, push it to the wildest edge of edges, then you force it into the realm of magic. And it doesn’t matter what it is that you select, because when it has been pushed far enough it contains everything else. - Tom Robbins; Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Everything on earth is beautiful, everything, except what we ourselves think and do when we forget the higher purposes of life and our own human dignity. - Anton Chekhov

We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh. -Friedrich Nietzsche

Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route. Charles Caleb Colton

No matter what you take on, insecurity is point of the job description. It’s not possible to blaze new trails and forge your own path while remaining on familiar ground. - Suzanne Falter-Barnes, How Much Joy Can You Stand

It takes a lot of time being a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing.
- Gertrude Stein

Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness — I wouldn’t know. But I am sure that it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.
- Aaron Copland

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction.
Betty Anderson Stanley

The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
W. H. Auden

Since when was genius found respectable?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.
Robertson Davies

Manners are the happy way of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love--now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dewdrops which give such depth to the morning meadows.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Genius always finds itself a century too early.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fortune always will confer an aura
Of worth, unworthily; and in this world
The lucky person passes for a genius
Euripedes

Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
Abraham Lincoln

Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.
Owen Meredith

Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.
José Ortega y Gasset

Every positive value has its price in negative terms...The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.
Pablo Picasso

One science only will one genius fit:
So vast is art, so narrow human wit.
Alexander Pope

We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in colour and fire, but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative types.
J.B. Priestley

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
Oscar Wilde

Love

 

There is no remedy for love but to love more. -Henry David Thoreau

In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love? - Igor Stravinsky

The material for the dance is air, the movement is breath, and the source is love. - Unknown

When Christ said: "I was hungry and you fed me," he didn't mean only the hunger for bread and for food; he also meant the hunger to be loved. Jesus himself experienced this loneliness. He came amongst his own and his own received him not, and it hurt him then and it has kept on hurting him. The same hunger, the same loneliness, the same having no one to be accepted by and to be loved and wanted by. Every human being in that case resembles Christ in his loneliness; and that is the hardest part, that's real hunger. - Mother Teresa

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. - Jonathan Swift

Music

Music is the canvas upon which the dancer paints herself. - erin dragonsong

It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness & of pain: of strength & freedom. The beauty of disappointment & never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature, & everlasting beauty of monotony. - Benjamin Britten

Music is spiritual. - Van Morrison

The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie. - Agnes De Mille

In dance, the music urges the body to let the spirit through. - erin dragonsong

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music; they should be taught to love it instead. - Igor Stravinsky

The music and the body together conceive the dance. - erin dragonsong

Sound creates the universe: vibration literally gives birth to physical form. Music being the highest form of sound, a voice raised in song is a most potent magical tool. Therefore be conscious of what your music and your voice are creating. - erin dragonsong

As the drum beats, so goes the dance. - Unknown

Those who dance are thought mad by those who hear not the music. - Unknown

The song is the canvas, the costume is the brush, and the dancer herself is the paint in all its colours and textures. - erin dragonsong

Any true music speaks with this universal mind to this universal mind in all people. - Bill Evans

In music and dance we soon become very aware of this world alive with gods and goddesses. - Gunther Schuller, Pulitzer Prize winner for music.

Improvisation is the courage to move from one note to the next. - Bobby McFerrin

Music is a bird upon which my spirit flies. - erin dragonsong

A study of ancient religions reveals that the first divine messages were given in song, as were the Psalms of David, the Song of Solomon, the Tahas of Zoroaster, and the Gita of Krishna. - Hazrat Inayat Khan

We are made up of vibrations. And thus, all beings can be said to have music in them. ... Sound, when seen in this way, is no less than a gift from God.- Kenny Werner

The music tells me the dance. I try very hard to listen. - erin dragonsong

Spirit

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later…our mothers are wracked with the pains of our physical birth: we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth. - Mary Antin

I could only believe in a god who could dance.... And now a god dances through me. -Nietzche

I have been missing the point. The point is not knowing another person, or learning to love another person. The point is simply this: how tender can we bear to be? What good manners can we show as we welcome ourselves and others into our hearts.
- Rebecca Wells, the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.

He who binds himself to a joy
Doth the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity’s sunrise.
- William Blake

Women return to the goddess by returning to themselves - erin dragonsong

A study of ancient religions reveals that the first divine messages were given in song, as were the Psalms of David, the Song of Solomon, the Tahas of Zoroaster, and the Gita of Krishna. - Hazrat Inayat Khan

We are made up of vibrations. And thus, all beings can be said to have music in them. ... Sound, when seen in this way, is no less than a gift from God.- Kenny Werner

When we find the centre in ourselves we find the centre of all. - erin dragonsong

And Goddess spoke to me in my soul,
And She said unto me
Wherever ye shall gather, one
woman with another,
Ye shall be gathered in my name
And there shall be chocolate.
- the New Gospel according to Erin

In all that I value there is a core of mystery.
- Marge Piercy

Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.
- Annie Dillard

You must be nothing but an ear that hears what the universe of the world is constantly saying within you. - Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritch

The reason angels can fly is because they take themselves so lightly.
- GK Chesterton

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
- .Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

It takes a lot of time being a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing.
- Gertrude Stein

Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness — I wouldn’t know. But I am sure that it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.
- Aaron Copland

The Indian concept that man was created so that God could behold himself (or herself) ...presents a magnificent image of humans as empty molds for God to pour consciousness into. When man expresses the inexpressible, he does so on the wings of song.
- William Blake

Prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.
Mahatma Ghandi

While the laughter of joy is in full harmony with our deeper life, the laughter of amusement should be kept apart from it. The danger is too great of thus learning to look at solemn things in a spirit of mockery, and to seek in them opportunities for exercising wit.
Lewis Carroll

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable. Helen Keller

Love is a spirit of all compact of fire. William Shakespeare

The seven deadly sins...Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones from Man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted. George Bernard Shaw

The spirit within nourishes, and mind instilled throughout the living parts activates the whole mass and mingles with the vast frame.
Virgil

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.
Oscar Wilde

Women

A woman without belly is like a sky without stars. - Arab idiom

It takes a tremendous rearrangement of mental priorities for women to eat well, that is to spend money on their insides instead of their outsides. - Joanna Russ, The Female Man

And I am here to say that we are all gods and goddesses, each and every one of us. - RuPaul

Once upon a time, too many women became too wide awake. - Sally Miller Gearhart, The Wanderground

There is in every true woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity. - Washington Irving

As a woman, I have no country.
As a woman, I want no country.
As a woman, my country is the whole world.
- Virginia Woolf

The Eternal Feminine draws us onward. - Goethe, Faust

Women are fire, unquenchable, flaming, ever alight. - Palladas of Alexandria

And beautiful maidens moved down in the dance
with the magic of motion and sunshine of glance
- Whittier

‘Twas surely the devil that taught women to dance.
- Thomas Fuller

Women can be close without being sexual, sexual without being passionate, passionate without being erotic, erotic without making a physical claim to the beloved, and they can be all these together with such subtle sensual passage from laughter to confession to whispered intimacy that no one in the world could say where friendship leaves off and love begins. - Kim Clerin, Utne Reader, June 97

The curve is more powerful than the sword. - Mae West

And Goddess spoke to me in my soul,
And She said unto me
Wheresoever ye shall gather,
one woman with another,
Ye shall be gathered in My name
And there shall be chocolate.
- the New Gospel according to Erin

It ain't the woman in your life honey,
it's the life in your woman - Mae West

Women return to the goddess by returning to themselves - erin dragonsong

 

Pears and women are the sweetest in the parts that are heaviest.
Japanese Proverb

 

A woman's belly is a garden with many kinds of fruit.
Arabian Proverb

For millenia we have been shamed. We share that shame with other women by blaming and judging ourselves and each other. Undoing this training is work: we must become aware of it and be diligent in turning away from it. Yet it is a labour of love, a labour of spirit; it brings us back to ourselves, our hearts, our community of sisters. It brings divinity in feminine form back to the world. —erin dragonsong
Charm is a glow within a woman that casts a most becoming light on others. -John Mason Brown

Grace was in all her steps, Heav’n in her Eye,
In every gesture dignity and love - John Milton, Paradise Lost

Biological possibility and desire are not the same as biological need. Women have childbearing equipment. For them to choose not to use the equipment is no more blocking what is instinctive than it is for a man who, muscles or no, chooses not to be a weightlifter. -Betty Rollin

* Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins. Thy neck is like a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim: thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus. Thine head upon thee is like Carmel, and the hair of thine head like purple; the king is held in the galleries. How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights! - Bible -- Song of Solomon 7:2-6