Nihilo nisi cruce

[wishful thinker]

This is my family motto.  Pianistimo... until you have the vaguest idea...please do NOT comment.....

Now P, we are not against each other .. the opposite....

[thalbergmad]

My family motto:

Come in peace or depart in pieces.

Thal

[ahinton]

My family motto:

Come in peace or depart in pieces.

Thal

I can lay claim to nothing so honourable a a family motto, but my school motto was [/i]Finis coronat opus[/i]. It's not my fault that they forgot the "clavicembalisticum" on the end, still less the "-ssy" on the end of the first word, but neither omission seemed to me to be of much meaningful consequence in any case, since that school was already phasing out the teaching of Latin when I first attended it; loathing as I did both this particlar school's uniform per se and very notion of the obligatory wearing of a school uniform in principle, I refused to wear it and, when called before the school headmaster to account for my intransigence, I retorted that the idea of wearing a blazer under the crest on which was emblazoned a motto in Latin as identification that I was a student at a school whose active policy was to phase out the teaching of that language seemed like an unwelcome mix of arrogance and irony. I was not expelled from that school, nor was I ever called upon to wear its dreadful uniform again.

Best,

Alistair

[ramseytheii]

This is not a motto, but a funny joke I heard once.
Apparently there is a tombstone in England that reads:
"John Longbottom
Died age 3 months"
About which my friend said, "Ars longa, vita brevis"

Walter Ramsey

[ahinton]

This is not a motto, but a funny joke I heard once.
Apparently there is a tombstone in England that reads:
"John Longbottom
Died age 3 months"
About which my friend said, "Ars longa, vita brevis"

Walter Ramsey

What a shame that this neat punchline was confined to a remark by your friend when, had there been any real justice in this world, it should have formed the latter part of the inscription on the tombstone itself...

Thanks nevertheless for this one!

Best,

Alistair

[pianolist]

"Ars longa, vita brevis"

Noêl Coward is supposed to have said, "Ars longa, Vita Sackville-West." I guess I can imagine what she looked like.

[pianistimo]

sempre fidelius   (hope that's how you spell it)

glad that first one wasn't something about hanging nils.

[pianowolfi]

My motto might be "credo quia absurdum"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credo_quia_absurdum

[ahinton]

My motto might be "credo quia absurdum"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credo_quia_absurdum

This sounds very much akin to a remark made in an interview that Stravinsky gave, quite late in his life (mid-1960s or thereabouts, as best I recall), in which he made some remark along the lines of his believing in God because it was so ridiculous.

My motto - on the basis of the above notion - might be "credo in unum Chopinum", but I'd better not say any more about that, otherwise I'll have "pianistimo" on me, accusing me of being an inveterate heretic, or something...

Best,

Alistair

[ahinton]

sempre fidelius   (hope that's how you spell it)

I really don't think that it is - especially since Delius was an out-and-out atheist of the kind that, unlike many atheists, actually loathed and despised the very notion of religious belief...

glad that first one wasn't something about hanging nils.

Nice quip, S!

Best,

Alistair

[pianowolfi]

This sounds very much akin to a remark made in an interview that Stravinsky gave, quite late in his life (mid-1960s or thereabouts, as best I recall), in which he made some remark along the lines of his believing in God because it was so ridiculous.

My motto - on the basis of the above notion - might be "credo in unum Chopinum", but I'd better not say any more about that, otherwise I'll have "pianistimo" on me, accusing me of being an inveterate heretic, or something...

Best,

Alistair

What exactly did Stravinsky say there? Afaik he used to be an atheist.

[ahinton]

What exactly did Stravinsky say there? Afaik he used to be an atheist.

As best I can now recall over all those years (and my memory may be as compromised as Pianistimo believes hers to be) it was just that - that he believed in God "because it was so ridiculous"; now precisely what, if anything, he meant by that at the time is somethng that we can now no longer ask him, of course - so anyone really interested ought perhaps to ask Stephen Walsh, by far the most excellent of his biographers...

Best,

Alistair

[pianowolfi]

As best I can now recall over all those years (and my memory may be as compromised as Pianistimo believes hers to be) it was just that - that he believed in God "because it was so ridiculous"; now precisely what, if anything, he meant by that at the time is somethng that we can now no longer ask him, of course - so anyone really interested ought perhaps to ask Stephen Walsh, by far the most excellent of his biographers...

Best,

Alistair

That's interesting. Rostropovitch said about Stravinsky: "Something has disturbed his relation with god, the poor guy" (Rostropovich's memoirs)