Eric Siblin Quotes

I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance.

What extraordinary changes and advances I have witnessed in my lifetime, what amazing progress in science, industry, the exploration of space, and yet hunger, racial oppression and tyranny still torment the world. We continue to act like barbarians, like savages we fear our neighbors on this earth, arm against them and they against us. I deplore to have lived at a time when man's law is to kill. The love of one's country is a natural thing but why should love stop at the border; our family is one, each of us has a duty to his brothers, we are all leaves of the same tree, and the tree is humanity...

To the whole world you might be just one person, but to one person you might just be the whole world.

The most perfect technique is that which is not noticed at all.

Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart..

Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe a moment that never was before and never will be again

I used to think that eighty was a very old age. Now I am ninety. I do not think this any more. As long as you are able to admire and to love, you are young.

The main thing in life is not to be afraid to be human.

I see no particular merit in the fact that I was an artist at the age of eleven. I was born with an ability, with music in me, that is all. No special credit was due me. The only credit we can claim is for the use we make of the talent we are given. That is why I urge young musicians: “Don’t be vain because you happen to have talent. You are not responsible for that; it was not of your doing. What you do with your talent is what matters. You must cherish this gift. Do not demean or waste what you have been given. Work — work constantly and nourish it.”

Of course the gift to be cherished most of all is that of life itself. One’s work should be a salute to life.

Don’t be vain because you happen to have talent. You are not responsible for that; it was not of your doing. What you do with your talent is what matters.

It takes courage for a man to listen to his own goodness and act on it. Do we dare to be ourselves? That is that question that counts.

When we play an unaccompanied Bach suite we may compare ourselves to an actor in Shakespeare's day, creating scenery which did not exist at all, through the power of declamation and suggestion. So in Bach. There is but one voice — and many voices have to be suggested.

Love for one's country is great but why should that love stop at that border?

In music, in the sea, in a flower, in a leaf, in an act of kindness... I see what people call God in all these things.

Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michaelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.