Works of art make rules but rules do not make works of art.
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As quoted in Companion to Contemporary Musical Thought (1992) by John Paynter, p. 590
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Unsourced variant: Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.Claude Debussy
» Claude Debussy - all quotes »
These rules are of use only in correcting the figures; since every man makes some mistakes in his first compositions and he who knows them not, cannot amend them. But you, knowing your errors, will correct your works and where you find mistakes amend them, and remember never to fall into them again. But if you try to apply these rules in composition you will never make an end, and will produce confusion in your works.
Leonardo da Vinci
Rules of grammar can not give us a mastery of language, rules of rhetoric can not make us eloquent, rules of conduct can not make us good.
John Lancaster Spalding
If they have entered into the spirit if these rules, and if the rules have made sufficient impression on them to become rooted and established in their minds, they will feel how much difference there is between what is said here and what a few logicians may perhaps have written by chance approximating to it in a few passages of their works.
Blaise Pascal
People who don't know anything tend to make up fake rules, the real rules being considerably more difficult to learn.
Aaron Sorkin
Don't talk to me about rules, dear. Wherever I stay I make the goddamn rules.
Maria Callas
Debussy, Claude
Debye, Peter
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