Here are two good quotes from two people who probably could not be more different (at least at first glance). The first comes from the great pianist Josef Hofmann and it appears in the foreword to his book on piano playing (which is actually a collection of essays on piano playing he wrote for The Ladies' Home Journal!):
In some respects the performance of a piece of music resembles the reading of a book aloud to some one. If a book should be read to us by a person who does not understand it, would it impress us as true, convincing, or even credible? Can a dull person, by reading them to us, convey bright thoughts intelligibly? Even if such a person were drilled to read with outward correctness that of which he cannot fathom the meaning, the reading could not seriously engage our attention, because the reader's want of understanding would be sure to effect a lack of interest in us (xix).
The second quote comes from Richard Feynman, the Nobel-prize winning physicist and one of the people responsible for the development of the atomic bomb. The quote comes from a collection of his essays title The pleasures of finding things out:
The beauty of a flower
I have a friend who's an artist and he's sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say, "Look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree, I think. And he says--"you see, I as an artist can see how beautiful this is, but you as a scientist, oh, take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing." And I think he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me, too, I believe, although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is; but I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time I see much more about the flower than he sees. I can imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside which also have a beauty... Also the processes, the fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting--it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: Does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which shows that a science knowledge only adds to the excitement and mystery and the awe of a flower (2).
In some respects the performance of a piece of music resembles the reading of a book aloud to some one. If a book should be read to us by a person who does not understand it, would it impress us as true, convincing, or even credible? Can a dull person, by reading them to us, convey bright thoughts intelligibly? Even if such a person were drilled to read with outward correctness that of which he cannot fathom the meaning, the reading could not seriously engage our attention, because the reader's want of understanding would be sure to effect a lack of interest in us (xix).
The second quote comes from Richard Feynman, the Nobel-prize winning physicist and one of the people responsible for the development of the atomic bomb. The quote comes from a collection of his essays title The pleasures of finding things out:
The beauty of a flower
I have a friend who's an artist and he's sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say, "Look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree, I think. And he says--"you see, I as an artist can see how beautiful this is, but you as a scientist, oh, take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing." And I think he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me, too, I believe, although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is; but I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time I see much more about the flower than he sees. I can imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside which also have a beauty... Also the processes, the fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting--it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: Does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which shows that a science knowledge only adds to the excitement and mystery and the awe of a flower (2).