If it is true that the violin is the most perfect of musical instruments, then Greek is the violin of human thought.

The violinist is that peculiarly human phenomenon distilled to a rare potency - half tiger, half poet.

Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.

Life is like playing the violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader’s soul.

If the souls of lives were voiced in music, there are some that none but a great organ could express, others the clash of a full orchestra, a few to which nought but the refined and exquisite sadness of a violin could do justice. Many might be likened unto common pianos, jangling and out of tune, and some to the feeble piping of a penny whistle, and mine could be told with a couple of nails in a rusty tin-pot.

The heart itself, and particularly the Jewish heart, is a violin: you pluck the strings, teasing out various, generally sad and gloomy songs

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

if a violin string could ache, i would be that string.

The oldest, truest, most beautiful organ of music, the origin to which alone our music owes its being, is the human voice.

Life, said Samuel Butler, is like giving a concert on the violin while learning to play the instrument — that, friends, is real wisdom.

Playing a violin is, after all, only scraping a cat's entrails with horsehair.

A violinist had a violin, a painter his palette. All I had was myself. I was the instrument that I must care for.

The human voice vibrates naturally - but in such a way - to such a degree that it all sounds beautiful - it is the nature of the voice. We imitate such effects not only on wind instruments, but also with violins - even on clavier - but as soon as you go beyond the natural limits, it no longer sounds beautiful - because it is contrary to nature.