The flute is not an instrument that has a good moral effectöit is too exciting.

-Aristotle
c.330  BC  Politics.

I want to know a butcher paints, A baker rhymes for his pursuit, Candlestick-maker much acquaints His soul with song, or, haply mute, Blows out his brains upon the flute.

-Browning, Robert
  'Shop', stanza 21.

The gauger walked with willing foot, And aye the gauger played the flute; And what should Master Gauger play But Over the hills and far away?

-Stevenson, Robert Louis
  'A Song of the Road', stanza1 (dated'Forest of Montargis, 1878'), collected in Underwoods (1887), bk.1, no.2.

The sound of the flute will cure epilepsyand sciatic gout.

-Theophrastus
Quoted in David Pickering Brewer'sTwentieth-Century Music (1994).