A Quote by Alma Gluck

Just as the bird sings or the butterfly soars, because it is his natural characteristic, so the artist works.

Alma Gluck

Quote Topics

Artist Because Bird Butterfly Characteristic His Just Natural Sings Works

Quote Author

Alma Gluck
American - Musician
May 11, 1884 - October 27, 1938

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.

William Blake

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill, of things unknown, but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill, for the caged bird sings of freedom.

Maya Angelou

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,- When he beats his bars and would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core, But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings- I know why the caged bird sings!

Paul Laurence Dunbar

There's a story... a legend, about a bird that sings just once in its life. From the moment it leaves its nest, it searches for a thorn tree... and never rests until it's found one. And then it sings... more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. And singing, it impales itself on the longest, sharpest thorn. But, as it dies, it rises above its own agony, to outsing the lark and the nightingale. The thorn bird pays its life for just one song, but the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles.

Colleen McCullough

If I wanted to play the violin, I had to work. Because anything that one wants to do really, and one loves doing, one must do everyday. It should be as easy to the artist and as natural as flying is to a bird. And you can’t imagine a bird saying well, I’m tired today, I’m not going to fly!

Yehudi Menuhin

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred.

Ernest Hemingway

Men who stand on any other foundation than the rock Christ Jesus are like birds that build in trees by the side of rivers. The bird sings in the branches, and the river sings below, but all the while the waters are undermining the soil about the roots, till, in some unsuspected hour, the tree falls with a crash into the stream; and then its nest is sunk, its home is gone, and the bird is a wanderer.

Henry Ward Beecher

The artist's imagination may wander far from nature. But as long as it is a living, moving power in his brain, isn't it just as real as any other natural phenomenon? The artist justifies his existence only when he can transform his imagination into truth.

Bill Vaughan

Mozart's mental grip never loosens; he never abandons himself to any one sense; even at his most ecstatic moments his mind is vigorous, alert, and on the wing. He dives unerringly on to his finest ideas like a bird of prey, and once an idea is seized he soars off again with an undiminished power.

Walter J. Turner

The artist of the future will live the ordinary life of a human being, earning his living by some kind of labour. He will strive to give the fruit of that supreme spiritual force which passes through him to the greatest number of people, because this conveying of the feelings that have been born in him to the greatest number of people is his joy and his reward. The artist of the future will not even understand how it is possible for an artist, whose joy consists in the widest dissemination of his works, to give these works only in exchange for a certain payment.

Leo Tolstoy

17. Butterfly A butterfly fluttered its wings in a wind thick with the smell of seaweed. His dry lips felt the touch of the butterfly for the briefest instant, yet the wisp of wing dust still shone on his lips years later.

Ryunosuke Akutagawa

I said earlier that I do not believe an artist's life throws much light upon his works. I do believe, however, that, more often than most people realize, his works may throw light upon his life. An artist with certain imaginative ideas in his head may then involve himself in relationships which are congenial to them.

W. H. Auden

A creative artist works on his next composition because he was not satisfied with his previous one.

Dmitri Shostakovich

The true self is not aware that it is a self. A bird, as it sings, sings itself. But not according to a picture. It has no idea of itself.

D. H. Lawrence

I'm a recording artist, a performing artist and a producing artist. All those things have everything to do with the outcome of my shows. I get myself studying every part of the game and not everyone has the characteristic to do that. In my mind, you need all three to become an artist.