Brass Quotes

Barton is a pretty brass tacks kind of guy. Kinda get the job done so I can go home. So I don't think it's very difficult for him to decide.

When we hear a Mozart piano concerto today, we're most likely to hear the piano part played on a modern concert grand. In the hands of a professional pianist, such a piano can bury the strings and the winds and hold its own against the brass. But Mozart wasn't composing for a nine-foot-long, thousand-pound piano; he was composing for a five-and-a-half-foot-long, hundred-and-fifty-pound piano built from balsa wood and dental floss.

Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.

Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain. We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them.

Brass shines as fair to the ignorant as gold to the goldsmiths.

As many bands as you heard [in New Orleans], that's how many bands you heard playing right. I thought I was in Heaven playing second trumpet in the Tuxedo Brass Band -- and they had some funeral marches that would just touch your heart, they were so beautiful.

In 'thinking up' music I usually have some kind of a brass band with wings on it in back of my mind.

Mac Rebennack, better known as Dr. John, once told me that when a brass band plays at a small club back up in one of the neighborhoods, it’s as if the audience—dancing, singing to the refrains, laughing—is part of the band.

That you were once unkind befriends me now, And for that sorrow, which I then did feel, Needs must I under my transgression bow, Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel.

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But bad mortality o'ersways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

Books have that strange quality, that being of the frailest and tenderest matter, they outlast brass, iron and marble.

Attempts to limit female mobility by hampering locomotion are ancient and almost universal. The foot-binding of upper-class Chinese girls and the Nigerian custom of loading women's legs with pounds of heavy brass wire are extreme examples, but all over the world similar stratagems have been employed to make sure that once you have caught a woman she cannot run away, and even if she stays around she cannot keep up with you. ... Literally as well as figuratively modern women's shoes are what keeps Samantha from running as fast as Sammy.

There comes, even to kings, the time of great weariness. Then the gold of the throne is brass, the silk of the palace becomes drab. The gems in the diadem and upon the fingers of the women sparkle drearily like the ice of white seas; the speech of men is as the empty rattle of a jester's bell and the feel comes of things unreal; even the sun is copper in the sky and the breath of the green ocean is no longer fresh.

Green little vaulter, in the sunny grass, Catching your heart up at the feel of June, Sole noise that's heard amidst the lazy noon, When ev'n the bees lag at the summoning brass.

On the hob was a little brass kettle, hissing and boiling; spread upon the floor was a warm, thick rug; before the fire was a folding-chair, unfolded and with cushions on it; by the chair was a small folding-table, unfolded, covered with a white cloth, and upon it were spread small covered dishes, a cup and saucer, and a tea-pot; on the bed were new, warm coverings, a curious wadded silk robe, and some books. The little, cold, miserable room seemed changed into Fairyland. It was actually warm and glowing.

Brass shines with constant usage, a beautiful dress needs wearing,Leave a house empty, it rots.

If you pinch the sea of its liberty, though it be walls of stone or brass, it will beat them down.

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

I'm not going to lay down in words the lure of this place. Every great writer in the land, from Faulkner to Twain to Rice to Ford, has tried to do it and fallen short. It is impossible to capture the essence, tolerance, and spirit of south Louisiana in words and to try is to roll down a road of clichés, bouncing over beignets and beads and brass bands and it just is what it is. It is home.

I grew up in a household in which we had a clock that we won at Revere Beach during the Depression - one of those brass clocks that didn't work - but it showed Franklin D. Roosevelt standing at the wheel of the New Deal.

Some make their worlds without knowing it. Their universes are just sesame seeds and three-day weekends and dial tones and skinned knees and physics and driftwood and emerald earrings and books dropped in bathtubs and holes in guitars and plastic and empathy and hardwood and heavy water and high black stockings and the history of the Vikings and brass and obsolescence and burnt hair and collapsed souffles and the impossibility of not falling in love in an art museum with the person standing next to you looking at the same painting and all the other things that just happen and are.

Fate handed Barack Obama the best of all political gifts - a dyspeptic, surly, spiteful opposition on the one hand and very unpopular financiers on the other - and he wouldn't come out punching, name names, or go for the jugular. It was as if while getting mugged by guys with brass knuckles, he turned the other cheek. He even jeopardized his pledge to preserve women's rights under Roe v. Wade in order to get a health care bill written by the corporate lapdog Max Baucus and the gang of revolving door mercenaries he hired to write a bill friendly to industry.

I was brought up on choirs and brass bands. They formed the music of my childhood. When I heard the Treorchy Male Choir at the Royal Variety Performance it brought back such happy memories. You have your own eminent place in the history of British music. You stand for excellence in a great tradition and your work for charity is both an example and an inspiration.

They tell me that So-and-So, who does not write prefaces, is no charlatan. Well, I am. I first caught the ear of the British public on a cart in Hyde Park, to the blaring of brass bands,and this . . . because . . . I am a natural-born mountebank.

As you'll never hear the thing again, my boy, why not throw in a couple of brass bands?

Brass bands are all very well in their place - outdoors and several miles away.

I find brass bands have a melancholy sound. All right out of doors, of course - fifty miles away. Like bagpipes, they turn what had been a dream into a public nuisance.

Parents can fail to cheer your successes as wildly as you expected, pointing out that you are sharing your Nobel Prize with a couple of other people, or that your Oscar was for supporting actress, not really for a starring role. More subtly, they can cheer your successes too wildly, forcing you into the awkward realization that your achievement of merely graduating or getting the promotion did not warrant the fireworks and brass band.

The Park Avenue of poodles and polished brass; it is cab country, tip-town, glassville, a window-washer's paradise.

Of Ickworth's boys, their father's joys, There is but one a bad one; The tenth is he, the parson's fee, And indeed he is a sad one. No love of fame, no sense of shame, And a bad heart, let me tell ye: Without, all brass; within, all ass, And the puppy's name is Felly.

Custom is custom: it is built of brass, boiler-iron, granite; facts, reasonings, arguments have no more effect upon it than the idle winds have upon Gibraltar.

In practice, without appropriate government intervention, Smith's "invisible hand" dons brass knuckles and conducts gang warfare, creating fierce battles between competitors who would be more than happy to define and enforce their own private property interests according to their own subjective rules.

Polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.

His locked, lettered, braw brass collar, Shewed him the gentleman and scholar.

It's time for me to give out an award to newly elected Majority Leader John Boehner. Mr. Boehner was elected just a few days ago to reform House Republicans, who are feeling the heat from lobbyist scandals. Well, CNN found out that he rents his two-bedroom apartment from a lobbyist who had clients who had interests in legislation that Boehner sponsored. And for that, Mr. Boehner, you've just won a pair of Stephen Colbert's big brass balls.

There's a sculpture in our bedroom, a solid brass replica of Antonio's manhood. It's very expensive, he gave it to me as a romantic gift.

With me, growing up in a theater family and having them be so supportive, from the jump, and being a part of this theater community where the brass ring is working, wherever that is, and then to play a character where he's not really concerned with that and is really just concerned with the monetary aspect of the job, and then to be identified with someone who is the antithesis of your energy and where you come from, has been a very interesting and surreal ride.

Hercules used noise! Brass bells! He scared them away with the most horrible sound he could-" said Percy "Percy... Chiron's collection!

Sergeant Colon of the Ankh-Morpork City Guard was on duty. He was guarding the Brass Bridge, the main link between Ankh and Morpork. From theft. When it came to crime prevention, Sergeant Colon found it safest to think big.

Americans, too many of them, take themselves too seriously. You're going to get rapped - by the viewers, by the sponsors and by the network brass - if you joke about doctors, lawyers, dentists, scientists, bus drivers, I don't care who. You can't make a joke about Catholics, Negroes, Jews, Italians, politicians, dogs or cats. In fact, politicians, dogs and cats are the most sacred institutions in America.

Many of the enchanted things in the book are lamps, carpets, sofas, gems, brass rings. It is a rather different landscape than the fairy tale landscape of the West. Though we have interiors and palaces, we don't have bustling cities, and there isn't the emphasis on the artisan making things. The ambiance from which they were written was an entirely different one. The Arabian Nights comes out of a huge world of markets and trade. Cairo, Basra, Damascus: trades and skills.

Don Quixote followed nature, and being satisfied with his first sleep, did not solicit more. As for Sancho, he never wanted a second, for the first lasted him from night to morning, indicating a sound body and a mind free from care; but his master, being unable to sleep himself awakened him, saying, "I am amazed, Sancho, at the torpor of thy soul; it seems as if thou wert made of marble or brass, insensible of emotion or sentiment!

Faith and philosophy are air, but events are brass.

There is something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there's also something in it which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is. And if it finally refuses conversion its corruption will be worse than the corruption of what ye call the lower passions. It is a stronger angel, and therefor, when it falls, a fiercer devil.

In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment in June.

You do not conceive a novel as easily as you conceive a child, nor even half as easily as you create nonfiction work. A journalist amasses facts, anecdotes and interviews with top brass. Enough of these add up to a book. A novelist demands quite different things. He has to find himself in his materials, to know for sure how he would feel and act and the events he writes about. In addition, he requires a catalyst — a person, idea, or emotion which coalesces his ingredients and makes them jell into a solid purpose.

Titles of honour are like the impressions on coin; — which add no value to gold and silver, but only render brass current.

I smiled,"Deoch, my heart is made of stronger stuff than glass. When she strikes she'll find it strong as iron-bound brass, or gold and adamant together mixed. Don't think I am unaware, some startled deer to stand transfixed by hunter's horns. It's she who should take care, for when she strikes, my heart will make a sound so beautiful and bright that it can't help but bring her back to me in winged light.

And write whatever Time shall bring to pass With pens of adamant on plates of brass.

Do not allow the accents in the brass to produce space between the notes.