“For these people, music and poetry are only themes which they elaborate into their own feelings. They feed upon the same verses and the same airs for centuries and never tire of them. Nature itself – the sublimity of music and poetry – what has she but two or three words and two or three notes, always the same, with which she saddens or fascinates men from the very first sigh to the very last?”

“For these people, music and poetry are only themes which they elaborate into their own feelings. They feed upon the same verses and the same airs for centuries and never tire of them. Nature itself – the sublimity of music and poetry – what has she but two or three words and two or three notes, always the same, with which she saddens or fascinates men from the very first sigh to the very last?”

— Alphonse de Lamartine