It's more fun to watch without joining in.
If I switch on the radio and hear some nice classical music, I will sit and listen to it but I don't sort of play records or go for any particular type of music.
The thrill of terror is passive, masochistic, and implicitly feminine. It is imaginative submission to overwhelming superior force.
You can get a certain amount of pleasure as a mathematical spectator, reading and watching some of the most beautiful arguments that have been created in the history of humanity. But that's too passive.
Any chance you have to sit back and be the one watching is great.
Is not beauty in music too often confused with something which lets the ears lie back in an easy chair?
You see, to me, the art of music is listening to it, not playing it. The real art of it is hearing it.
Katie commented that Americans had lost the ability to enjoy themselves. "We watch television," Dave said.
But there is a world of difference between dancing and watching a dance performed by a group of professionals who are paid for it. You work hard during the day, and when you are tired in the evening you go to a concert to watch others dancing. It is all you can do, but it is not even an apology for celebration.
I rather go to see a good play than be in one.
The mere brute pleasure of reading the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.
Can you appreciate music without playing it? Yes, you can. You can appreciate baseball without playing it. Many people attend a football game merely for the crowd, the excitement, the color.
I still like to get carried away - but passively.
I've always had fun with music, but I prefer to listen to it rather than sing.
I am privileged to be at the right end of violins: not the end holding it but to listen to it.
I want to just be lazy and I want some of the people around me to be doing things, because that makes me feel comfortable and safe - and I want some of them to be doing nothing at all, because they can be graceful and companionable for me.
It's enjoyable to just drink in an image. It's effortless. That struck me as an interesting way of looking at it: I do all the grunt work so you can enjoy.
I like playing the guy on the sidelines. They have more fun.
I'm happy to just sit in a cafe and watch people. It's my favorite thing to do, for sure.
I never sit in a cinema and go, "Ah! I want to be in that film!"
The way I relax, what I like doing most, is watching. That's why I like traveling, to have new things before my eyes - even a new face. I enjoy myself like that and can stay for hours, looking at things, people, scenery.
Passive pleasure is no pleasure at all.
