Quote#Freedom
If you tie George Frideric Handel|Handel's hands by debarring him…
Quote bySamuel Butler · 1835–1902
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Part VIII: Handel and Music, Handel and Bach, i.
English (original)
If you tie George Frideric Handel|Handel's hands by debarring him from the rendering of human emotion, and if you set Johann Sebastian Bach|Bach's free by giving him no human emotion to render — if, in fact, you rob Handel of his opportunities and Bach of his difficulties — the two men can fight after a fashion, but Handel will even so come off victorious.
— Samuel Butler
More from Samuel Butler
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
Stowed away in a Montreal lumber room The Discobolus standeth and turneth his face to the wall; Dusty, cobweb-covered, maimed and set at naught, Beauty crieth in an attic and no man regardeth: O God! O Montreal!
The Discobolus is put here because he is vulgar — He has neither vest nor pants with which to cover his limbs.
We can see nothing face to face; our utmost seeing is but a fumbling of blind finger-ends in an overcrowded pocket.
The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.