Michael Tilson Thomas Quotes

What is this world? A mere curl of smoke for the wind to scatter.

The world is all a carcass and vanity, The shadow of a shadow, a play And in one word, just nothing.

In the beginning, there was silence. And out of the silence came the sound. The sound is not here.

Life doesn't last; art doesn't last. It doesn't matter.

Whatever is subject to origination is all subject to cessation.

Every spirit passing through the world fingers the tangible and mars the mutable and finally has come to look and not to buy. So shoes are worn and hassocks are sat upon and finally everything is left where it was and the spirit passes on, just as the wind in the orchard picks up the leaves from the ground as if there were no other pleasure in the world but brown leaves, as if it would deck, clothe, flesh itself in flourishes of dusty brown apple leaves and then drops them all in a heap at the side of the house and goes on.

Good and bad, happy and sad, all thoughts vanish into emptiness like the imprint of a bird in the sky.

think of nothing things think of wind

When they're gone out of his head, these words, they'll be gone, everywhere, forever. As if they had never been.

And consider: it is loss to which everything flows, absence in which everything flowers

The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night. The last instance of a thing takes the class with it. Turns out the light and is gone. Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.

Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie, Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and-sans End!

Be hole, be dust, be dream, be wind/Be night, be dark, be wish, be mind,/Now slip, now slide, now move unseen,/Above, beneath, betwixt, between.

Jump to the day we'll all be dead and none of this will matter. Jump to the day another house will stand here and the people living there won't know we ever happened.

In each thing there is an insinuation of death. Stillness, silence, serenity are all apprenticeships.

Then, as horizons step, Or noons report away,Without the formula of sound, It passes, and we stay:A quality of loss Affecting our content.

That nothing is static or fixed, that all is fleeting and impermanent, is the first mark of existence. Everything is in process.

Everything has two endings- a horse, a piece of string, a phone call. Before a life, air. And after. As silence is not silence, but a limit of hearing.

That's what life is about: People come and go.

It's not the end of the world at all," he said. "It's only the end for us. The world will go on just the same, only we shan't be in it. I dare say it will get along all right without us.

We are fastened to a dying animal.

All things are taken from us, and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.

Reflect frequently upon the instability of things, and how very fast the scenes of nature are shifted. Matter is in perpetual flux. Change is always and everywhere at work; it strikes through causes and effects, and leaves nothing fixed and permanent.

All is ephemeral - fame and the famous as well.