Quotes About The Harp

“When the Whispering Mountain shall scream aloud
And the castle of Malyn ride on a cloud,
Then Malyn's lord shall have and hold
The lost that is found, the harp of gold.
Then Fig-hat Ben shall wear a shroud,
Then shall the despoiler, that was so proud,
Plunge headlong down from Devil's Leap;
Then shall the Children from darkness creep,
And the men of the glen avoid disaster,
And the Harp of Teirtu find her master.”

— Joan Aiken

“On the day of the dead, when the year too dies,
Must the youngest open the oldest hills
Through the door of the birds, where the breeze breaks.
There fire shall fly from the raven boy,
And the silver eyes that see the wind,
And the light shall have the harp of gold.
By the pleasant lake the Sleepers lie,
On Cadfan's Way where the kestrels call;
Though grim from the Grey King shadows fall,
Yet singing the golden harp shall guide
To break their sleep and bid them ride.
When light from the lost land shall return,
Six Sleepers shall ride, six Signs shall burn,
And where the midsummer tree grows tall
By Pendragon's sword the Dark shall fall.
Y maent yr mynyddoedd yn canu,
ac y mae'r arglwyddes yn dod.”

— Susan Cooper

“When the Dark comes rising six shall turn it back;
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron; Water, fire, stone;
Five will return and one go alone.
Iron for the birthday; bronze carried long;
Wood from the burning; stone out of song;
Fire in the candle ring; water from the thaw;
Six signs the circle and the grail gone before.
Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold
Played to wake the sleepers, oldest of old.
Power from the Green Witch, lost beneath the sea.
All shall find the Light at last, silver on the tree.”

— Susan Cooper

“In the secret island the Druid shall dwell once more, and the Bard, the slave of the harp, utter the speech of the Gods.”

— Lewis Spence

“The harmony that holds the stars on their courses and the flesh on our bones resonates through all creation. Every sound contains its echo. Before there was humankind, or even forest, there was sound. Sound spread from the source in great circles like those formed when a stone is dropped in a pool.
We follow waves of sound from life to life. A dying man's ears will hear long after his eyes are blind. He hears the sound that leads him to his next life as the Source of All being plucks the harp of creation.”

— Morgan Llywelyn

“If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung”

— Grateful Dead

“Where now are the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the harp on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the deadwood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?”

— J.R.R. Tolkien

“Folly it may seem. Indeed in nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that divides all those who still oppose him ... . We live now upon an island amid many perils, and our hands are more often upon the bowstring than upon the harp”

— J.R.R. Tolkien

“Less doth yearning trouble him who knoweth many songs, or with his hands can touch the harp: his possession is his gift of glee which God gave him.”

— J.R.R. Tolkien

“If Saul could have had you for his David, the evil spirit would have been exorcised without the aid of the harp.”

— Charlotte Brontë

“We are all lonely and all seek a hand to hold in the darkness. It is not the harp, but the hand that plays it.”

— Bernard Cornwell

“She played a great deal better than either of the Miss Musgroves; but having no voice, no knowledge of the harp, and no fond parents to sit by and fancy themselves delighted, her performance was little thought of, only out of civility, or to refresh the others, as she was well aware. She knew that when she played she was giving pleasure only to herself; but this was no new sensation: excepting one short period of her life, she had never, since the age of fourteen, never since the loss of her dear mother, know the happiness of being listened to, or encouraged by any just appreciation or real taste. In music she had been always used to feel alone in the world; and Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove's fond partiality for their own daughters' performance, and total indifference to any other person's, gave her much more pleasure for their sakes, than mortification for her own.”

— Jane Austen

“I am producing sounds that people are not used to hearing from the harp.”

— Joanna Newsom

“Then I started checking out blues albums from the library and playing the harp along with them.”

— John Goodman

“And tears are heard within the harp I touch.”

— Petrarch

“Glorious is the Voice of Man, and sweet is the music of the harp.”

— Richard Llewellyn

“She [Mrs. Badger] was surrounded in the drawing-room by various objects, indicative of her painting a little, playing the piano a little, playing the guitar a little, playing the harp a little, singing a little, working a little, reading a little, writing poetry a little, and botanizing a little. She was a lady of about fifty, I should think, youthfully dressed, and of a very fine complexion. If I add to the little list of her accomplishments that she rouged a little, I do not mean that there was any harm in it.”

— Charles Dickens

“It's totally different. I usually don't tell people about the Pleased if they know me from the harp. And if they are there to see the Pleased, I usually don't tell them about the harp. I am nervous that these people will expect something similar.”

— Joanna Newsom

“The Violins waltzed. The Cellos and Basses provided accompaniment. The Violas mourned their fate, while the Concertmaster showed off. The Flutes did bird imitations ... repeatedly, and the reed instruments had the good taste to admire my jacket. The Trumpets held a parade in honor of our great nation, while the French Horns waxed nostalgic about something or other. The Trombones had too much to drink. The Percussion beat the band, and the Tuba stayed home playing cards with his landlady, the Harp, taking sips of warm milk a blue little cup.
But the Composer is still dead.”

— Lemony Snicket

“Though parted from all his soul held dear, and though often yearning for what lay beyond, still was he never positively and consciously miserable; for, so well is the harp of human feeling strung, that nothing but a crash that breaks every string can wholly mar its harmony; and, on looking back to seasons which in review appear to us as those of deprivation and trial, we can remember that each hour, as it glided, brought its diversions and alleviations, so that, though not happy wholly, we were not, either, wholly miserable.”

— Harriet Beecher Stowe

“The harp sounds at each passing breeze, but that does not mean the tune is masterfully played.”

— Jacqueline Carey

“I've played everything but the harp.”

— Lionel Barrymore

“Along the Chilean coast, with cold and winter,
when rain falls washing the weeks.
Listen: solitude becomes music once more,
and it seems its appearance is that of air, of rain,
that time, something with wave and wings, passes by,
grows. And the harp awakes from oblivion.”

— Pablo Neruda

“Whoop it up for liberty! After Ireland is free, says the patriot who won't touch socialism, we will protect all classes, and if you won't pay your rent you will be evicted same as now. But the evicting party, under command of the sheriff, will wear green uniforms and the Harp without the Crown, and the warrant turning you out on the roadside will be stamped with the arms of the Irish Republic. Now, isn't that worth fighting for?”

— James Connolly

“We would never know the music of the harp-if the strings were left untouched. We would never enjoy the juice of the grape-if it were not trodden in the winepress. We would never discover the sweet perfume of cinnamon-if it were not pressed and beaten. We would never feel the warmth of fire-if the coals were not utterly consumed. The wisdom and power of the great Workman are revealed by the trials through which His vessels of mercy are permitted to pass. Present afflictions tend also to heighten future joy. There must be dark shadows in the picture-to bring out the beauty of the lights. Could we be so supremely blessed in heaven-if we had not known the curse of sin and the sorrow of earth? Will not peace be sweeter-after conflict? Will not rest be more welcome-after toil? Will not the bliss of the glorified-be enhanced the recollection of past sufferings?”

— Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“A girl wearing a wicker chicken and playing the harp bopped me with a book about buns and then stuffed me under a piano.”

— Gail Carriger

“Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed.”

— Dylan Thomas

“We all share in the same cosmic rhythm ... For all natural laws are like the rhythm of the strings of the harp.”

— Ernesto Cardenal

“I didn't really know a lot of the history when I was younger. I didn't realize that the harp is coded in such a specific way in musical circles. It's kind of this society instrument because of its history as a young woman's parlor instrument.”

— Joanna Newsom

“I don't look at people's expressions, because I still get nervous when I play, especially when I first put the harp up there. I just try to tune - it takes me a half-hour to tune, and I get nervous if I look at anybody when I do it.”

— Joanna Newsom

“My voice in combination with the harp - which, by the way, I use because I've played it my entire life, not to make some statement about the harp - somehow has ... coloured people's interpretations of the music and projected an idea of childlike or fairytale quality or innocence. Which sometimes prevents people from listening to the songs the way I would like them to be listened to.”

— Joanna Newsom

“I had known that people would probably have strange reactions to my voice, because I have kind of an unwieldy, difficult voice, but I never thought that anybody would have a problem with the harp. I just assumed ... C'mon, it's a beautiful instrument.”

— Joanna Newsom

“Heaven is totally overrated. It seems boring. Clouds, listening to people play the harp. It should be somewhere you can't wait to go, like a luxury hotel. Maybe blue skies and soft music were enough to keep people in line in the 17th century, but heaven has to step it up a bit. They're basically getting by because they only have to be better than hell.”

— Joel Stein

“Last year the [harp seal] pup mortality rate was 100 percent in parts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.”

— Brian Skerry

“Man becomes virtually an automaton in the loss of his individuality and responsibility. He is the harp of a thousand strings played upon by a divine hand, but not a man!”

— John Grier Hibben

“Revival, as contrasted with a Holy Ghost atmosphere is a clean- cut breakthrough of the Spirit, a sweep of Holy Ghost power, bending the hearts of hardened sinners as the wheat before the wind, breaking up the fountains of the great deep, sweeping the whole range of the emotions, as the master hand moves across the harp strings, from the tears and cries of the penitent to the holy laughter and triumphant joy of the cleansed.”

— Norman Grubb

“The harp was so much more gestural and physical for me than the piano - something about bringing this instrument into your body.”

— Zeena Parkins

“During the reign of Rameses III (the Twentieth Dynasty) Egypt saw a flowering of its civilization and the harp became the royal instrument of priests and kings. Often times they had as many as 21 strings. Under the manipulation "the Minstrels of the Gods" the music was of rare potency. "Musical Medicine" was an actuality. Healing, along with numerous so-called "supernatural feats" was attributed to this art.”

— Corinne Heline

“(As a boy) I was listening to Sonny Boy Williamson's (I) records and I would close my eyes and I could visualize myself playing the harp.”

— Junior Wells

“Sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving; sing praise upon the harp unto our God: Who covereth the heaven with clouds, who prepareth rain for the earth, who maketh grass to grow upon the mountains.”

— David

“Your body is the harp of the soul.”

— Khalil Gibran

“The harp is an insipid instrument
no good for dancing, feasting, or marching, only for sitting primly in a parlor or on a cloud.”

— Mason Cooley

“Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.”

— Alfred Lord Tennyson

“Whatever we learn to do, we learn by actually doing it; men come to be builders, for instance, by building, and harp players by playing the harp. In the same way, by doing just acts we come to be just; by doing self-controlled acts, we come to be self-controlled ; and by doing brave acts, we become brave.”

— Aristotle

“There's something fundamental to the harp that has retained its appeal my whole life. It's an instrument I am just in love with.”

— Joanna Newsom

“Free thyself from the mighty attraction-
The maddening wine of love, the charm of sex.
Break the harp! Forward, with the ocean's cry! ...”

— Swami Vivekananda

“I will point ye out the right path of a virtuous and noble Education; laborious indeed at first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect, and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming.”

— John Milton

“Life is like the harp string, if it is strung too tight it won't play, if it is too loose it hangs, the tension that produces the beautiful sound lies in the middle.”

— Gautama Buddha

“The harp that once through Tara's halls The soul of music shed, Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls As if that soul were fled. So sleeps the pride of former days, So glory's thrill is o'er; And hearts that once beat high for praise Now feel that pulse no more.”

— Charles Lamb

“Two touch the string,
The harp is dumb.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson