There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.

-Beecham, SirThomas
Quoted in Harold  Atkins and  Archie Newman Beecham Stories (1978).

Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain: In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because theyare few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low: Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and mournersgo about the streets: Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Ecclesiastes12:1^7.

It's north you may run to the rime-ringed sun, Or south to the blind Horn's hate; Or east all the way into Mississippi Bay, Or west to the Golden Gate.

-Kipling, (Joseph) Rudyard
  Twenty Poems,'The Long Trail'.

Another age shall see the golden ear Imbrown the slope, and nod on the parterre, Deep harvests bury all his pride has planned, And laughing Ceres re-assume the land.

-Pope, Alexander
Epistles to Several Persons,'To Lord Burlington', l.173^6.

The greater cats with golden eyes Stare out between the bars. Deserts are there, and different skies, And night with different stars.

-Sackville-West,Vita (Victoria Mary)
  'The Greater Cats with Golden Eyes'.

In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun O'er which clouds are brightening, Thou dost float and run Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
  'To a Skylark', stanza 3.

The world's great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn; Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
  'Hellas', l.1060^5.

[Nature's] world isbrazen, thepoets onlydeliveragolden.

-Sidney, Sir Philip
  The Defence of Poetry.

A stately palace built of square'  d brick, Which cunningly was without mortar laid, Whose walls were high, but nothing strong, nor thick, And golden foil all over them displayed, That purest sky with brightness they dismayed.

-Spenser, Edmund
  Of the palace of pride. The Faerie Queen, bk.1, canto 4, stanza 4.

But we grow old, Ah! when shall all men's good Be each man's rule, and universal peace Lie like a shaft of light across the land, And like a lane of beams athwart the sea, Through all the circle of the golden year.

-Tennyson
  'The GoldenYear', l.47^51.

   The century that began with a golden age in all the arts (or at least the golden twilight of one) is ending not so much without art as without the idea of art.

-Vidal, Gore originally Eugene Luther Vidal,Jr
Introduction to Logan Pearsall Smith AllTrivia (1984).

Had I the heavens'embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

-Yeats,W(illiam) B(utler)
  'HeWishes for the Cloths of Heaven', complete poem. Collected in TheWind Among the Reeds (1899).