The child taught to believe any occurrence a good or evil omen, or any day of the week lucky, hath a wide inroad made upon the soundness of his understanding.
Soundness of understanding is connected with freedom of enquiry; consequently, opinion should, as far as public security will admit, be exempted from restraint.
You've got to know much more than the mere technicalities of notes. You've got to know sounds and what goes between the notes.
Sound economy is a sound understanding brought into action; it is calculation realized; it is the doctrine of proportion reduced to practice; it is foreseeing contingencies, and providing against them.
Speech sounds cannot be understood, delimited, classified and explained except in the light of the tasks which they perform in language.
Noises have generally been thought of as indistinct, but this is not true.
Though men of delicate taste be rare, they are easily to be distinguished in society by the soundness of their understanding, and the superiority of their faculties above the rest of mankind.
But when you have to deal with notes, and to be able to make a full definition of what a sound is - if you are not around that environment, then you'll find you lose that feel, that momentum, you lose all that.
It is as hard a thing to maintain a sound understanding, a tender conscience, a lively, gracious, heavenly spirit, and an upright life in the midst of contention, as to keep your candle lighted in the greatest storms.
