Yehudi Menuhin Quotes

Music lives and breathes to tell us who we are and what we face. It is a path between ourselves and the infinite.

Music is a therapy.It is a communication far more powerful than words, far more immediate, far more efficient.

Music creates order out of chaos: for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent, melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous.

If I wanted to play the violin, I had to work. Because anything that one wants to do really, and one loves doing, one must do everyday. It should be as easy to the artist and as natural as flying is to a bird. And you can’t imagine a bird saying well, I’m tired today, I’m not going to fly!

Each human being has the eternal duty of turning what is hard and brutal into a tender and subtle offering, what is crude into an object of refinement, what is ugly into a thing of beauty, confrontation into collaboration, ignorance into knowledge, hereby rediscovering the child's dream of a creative reality incessantly renewed by death, the servant of life, and by life the servant of love

Peace may sound simple - one beautiful word - but it requires everything we have, every quality, every strength, every dream, every high ideal.

To play great music, you must keep your eyes on a distant star.

The ultimate aim in life should be to fulfill to the utmost all that within our ability and to share that which is good and beautiful.

I can only think of music as something inherent in every human being - a birthright. Music coordinates mind, body and spirit.

The practice of yoga induces a primary sense of measure and proportion. Reduced to our own body, our first instrument, we learn to play it, drawing from it maximum resonance and harmony.

A society without its dreamers can never be free.

Why is compassion not part of our established curriculum, an inherent part of our education? Compassion, awe, wonder, curiosity, exaltation, humility - these are the very foundation of any real civilization, no longer the prerogatives, the preserves of any one church, but belonging to everyone, every child in every home, in every school.

Improvisation is not the expression of accident but rather of the accumulated yearnings, dreams and wisdom of our very soul.

To be an outstanding musician, you have to be very attentive to the smallest detail and willing to have infinite patience in the pursuit of your ideal. You require absolute control and professionalism.

It is music that welds spiritual and sensual, that can convey ecstasy free of guilt, faith without dogma, love as homage, and a person at home with nature and the infinite.

In all teaching there must be a fusion of authority as an adult providing a stable framework for the children in one's care, and humility as another human being ready to educate an equal who may turn out to be a superior.

Life is not a finished product, it is only what we make of it, and if we make nothing of it, someone else will, and we will be his slave.

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

We are full of rhythms . . . our pulse, our gestures, our digestive tracts, the lunar and seasonal cycles.

We are living in a world where the individual must learn to command the raw materials of expression. He must not be dependent all the time on the ready-made, the finished product. It's the transferring, the changing of the raw into what is the expression of your own self – the whole joy and satisfaction and frustration of life is built into this.

A dream is unrehearsed.

Do we not find freedom along the guiding lines of discipline?

I would hate to think I am not an amature. An amateur is one who loves what he is doing. Very often, I'm afraid, the professional hates what he is doing. So, I'd rather be an amateur.

Everyone should in some way be creative, irrespective of the quality of that which he creates.

A way of life which excludes the realm of the unknown and the mysterious is simply not in harmony with life itself.