Eric Siblin Quotes

The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?

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.

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

On my last birthday I was ninety-three years old. That is not young, of course. In fact, it is older than ninety. But age is a relative matter. If you continue to work and to absorb the beauty in the world about you, you find that age does not necessarily mean getting old. At least, not in the ordinary sense. I feel many things more intensely than ever before, and for me life grows more fascinating.

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

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.

Music will save the world.

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...

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.

The art of not playing in tempo — one has to learn it. And the art of not playing what is written on the printed paper.

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

Work helps prevent one from getting old. I, for one, cannot dream of retiring. Not now or ever. Retire? The word is alien and the idea inconceivable to me. I don’t believe in retirement for anyone in my type of work, not while the spirit remains. My work is my life. I cannot think of one without the other. To “retire” means to me to begin to die. The man who works and is never bored is never old. Work and interest in worthwhile things are the best remedy for age. Each day I am reborn. Each day I must begin again.

For the past eighty years I have started each day in the same manner.

Do we dare to be ourselves? That is the question that counts.

The cello is like a beautiful woman who has not grown older, but younger with time, more slender, more supple, more graceful.

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.