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

A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. We provide the music, and you provide the silence.
conductor Leopold Stokowski to a talkative audience

If I had the power, I would insist on all oratorios being sung in the costume of the period - with a possible exception in the case of the Creation.
Ernest Newman, music critic, New York Post 1924