Lewis Thomas Quotes

Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?

I wonder if anyone else has an ear so tuned and sharpened as I have, to detect the music, not of the spheres, but of earth, subtleties of major and minor chord that the wind strikes upon the tree branches. Have you ever heard the earth breathe?

We listen too much to the telephone and we listen too little to nature. The wind is one of my sounds. A lonely sound, perhaps, but soothing. Everybody should have his personal sounds to listen for-sounds that will make him exhilarated and alive, or quiet and calm... As a matter of fact, one of the greatest sounds of them all-and to me it is a sound-is utter, complete silence.

Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school? Are the people inside the school musical and the ones outside unmusical? What if the ones inside can't hear very well, would that change my question?

When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking. And talking about his feelings, or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic, the sound of traffic - here on Sixth Avenue, for instance - I don’t have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the activity of sound... I don’t need sound to talk to me.

If sound is music and came from silence, then silence is potentially greater than sound. If the sound is effective, it should actually have a chemical - some sort of physiological - effect on the listener, so he doesn't have to hear that sound again.

Language. I loved it. And for a long time I would think of myself, of my whole body, as an ear.

The world's continual breathing is what we hear and call silence.

If there's loads of material going by you don't notice the individual things quite so much. Also it really foregrounds the sonic dimensions like electronic ambient music, it's pushes all of that colour to the foreground so you hear little every atom of sound.

Everybody has their taste in noises as well as in other matters; and sounds are quite innoxious, or most distressing, by their sort rather than their quantity.

A person does not hear sound only through the ears; he hears sound through every pore of his body. It permeates the entire being.

As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing.

Wherever Harry went inside the tiny cottage or its garden, he could hear the constant ebb and flow of the sea, like the breathing of some great, slumbering creature.

Whether I make them or not, there are always sounds to be heard and all of them are excellent.

Wherever men are noble, they love bright colour; and wherever they can live healthily, bright colour is given them—in sky, sea, flowers, and living creatures.

When you walk 25-30 feet above ground, it is a miracle, because you are still in the city ... but you are flying above the city. You are in the middle of trees, and that is a moment of beauty.

The rumble of the life outside was like the sound of the sea which was rising gradually around her.

Hill and valley, seas and constellations, are but stereotypes of divine ideas appealing to and answered by the living soul of man.

Finally from the crease of the ravine I am following, there begins to come the trickling and splashing of water. There is a great restfulness in the sounds these small streams make; they are going down as fast as they can, but their sound seem leisurely and idle, as if produced like gemstones with the greatest patience and care.

I love the sound of the wind in the trees and the song of the birds and the shuffle in the leaves of my many woodland friends.

There are those who, attracted by grass, flowers, mountains, and waters, flow into the Buddha Way.

Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her.

We are all born bonded to nature; that's why we put depictions of flowers and forests, rather than bulldozers or log piles, on our walls.