A Quote by Thomas Beecham

If an opera cannot be played by an organ grinder, it's not going to achieve immortality.

Thomas Beecham

Quote Topics

Achieve Cannot Going Grinder Immortality Opera Organ Played

Quote Author

Thomas Beecham
English - Composer
April 29, 1879 - March 8, 1961

It is in the twenties that the actual momentum of life begins to slacken, and it is a simple soul indeed to whom as many things are as significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before. At thirty an organ-grinder is a more or less a moth eaten man who grinds an organ - and once he was an organ-grinder! The unmistakable stigma of humanity touches all those impersonal and beautiful things that only youth ever grasps in their impersonal glory.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Some people want to achieve immortality through their works or their descendants. I prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.

Woody Allen

I am not going to spend any time whatsoever in attacking the Foreign Secretary. If we complain about the tune, there is no reason to attack the monkey when the organ grinder is present.

Aneurin Bevan

I played the organ when I went to military school, when I was 10. They had a huge organ, the second-largest pipe organ in New York State. I loved all the buttons and the gadgets. I've always been a gadget man.

Stephen Sondheim

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

Winston Churchill

I don't want to achieve immortality by being inducted into the Hall of Fame. I want to achieve immortality by not dying.

William De Morgan

I had been inspired by an organ player named Earl Grant, who played organ and piano together. My mom took me to see him. So I went home, put my piano and organ together, too.

Billy Preston

Frank's audience doesn't care if a girl singer, a comic or an organ grinder with a monkey opens the show. They are there to see HIM.

Nancy Sinatra

It reminded me of a meat grinder. From when I was a kid. Going to school it felt like you were in a meat grinder. It chews you up and pours out this mess that can't function

Gerard Way

Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.

Terry Pratchett

Why should I question the monkey when I can question the organ grinder.

Aneurin Bevan

I played for my first church service when I was nine years old. I was sufficiently tall to be able to reach the pedals. The first hymn I played was Bringing in the Sheaves, and to this day I can play it in any key. I graduated to a Hammond organ a few years later when we went to another church, and then in high school came one of the loves of my life, the pipe organ. The sound of the pipe organ still gives me a thrill, whether soft strings or drowning out the orchestra as in Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra.

Barbara Harbach

I was going to be a singer. If I hadn't been in my profession, I was going to be an Opera singer. That's from a young kid. I had all these records from all those famous Opera singers. I wanted to be an Opera singer - that was my whole thing and physical fitness got in the way, thank God.

Jack LaLanne

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.

Woody Allen

Why get rid of Chamberlain to put in Halifax? It's like getting rid of the organ-grinder to put in the monkey.