If a young man at the age of twenty-three can write a symphony like that, in five years he will be ready to commit murder.

-Damrosch,WalterJohannes
  After conducting  Aaron Copland's Symphony for Organ and Orchestra. Quoted in Machlis Introduction to Contemporary Music (1963).

A symphony must be like the world, it must embrace everything.

-Mahler, Gustav
  In conversation with Sibelius. Quoted in Ian Crofton and Donald Fraser  A Dictionary of Musical Quotations (1985).

Ring out, ye crystal spheres, Once bless our human ears (If ye have power to touch our senses so), And let your silver chime Move in melodious time, And let the bass of Heaven's deep organ blow; And with your ninefold harmony Make up full consort to th'angelic symphony.

-Milton,John
  'On the Morning of Christ's Nativity','The Hymn', stanza13.

   You're the top You're the Louvr'Museum You're a melody from a symphony by Strauss.

-Porter, Cole
  'You're theTop', from the show Anything Goes.

It's like orchestrating a symphony of unhappiness.

-Rockefeller,John D(avison), III
On the necessity of compromise in health-care financing. In theWashington Post,1 Jul.

Every writer must eventually write his Ninth Symphony or give in to despair.

-Roy, Gabrielle
  Letter,1Aug, quoted inJoan Hind-SmithThreeVoices (1975).

Of course, being fatally poor and dingy, it was wise of Gerty to have taken up philanthropy and symphony concerts.

-Wharton, Edith Newbold ne¤  e Jones
  The House of Mirth, bk.1, ch.8.