There comes a pause, for human strength will not endure to dance without cessation; and everyone must reach the point at length of absolute prostration.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (1832–98) British Anglican Author, Mathematician, Clergyman, Photographer, Logician
Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart.
—Martha Graham (1894–1991) American Choreographer
Dance is the landscape of a man’s soul
—Indian Proverb
To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.
—Jane Austen (1775–1817) English Novelist
How inimitably graceful children are in general before they learn to dance!
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
You can dance anywhere, even if only in your heart.
—Indian Proverb
Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.
—Dave Barry (b.1947) American Humorist, Columnist
Dancing is an amusement which has been discouraged in our country by many of the best people, and not without some reason.—It is associated in their mind with balls; and this is one of the worst forms of social pleasure.—The time consumed in preparing for a ball, the waste of thought upon it, the extravagance of dress, the late hours, the exhaustion of strength, the exposure of health, and the languor of the succeeding day—these and other evils connected with this amusement, are strong reasons for banishing it from the community.—But dancing ought not, therefore, to be proscribed.—On the contrary, balls should be discouraged for this among other reasons, that dancing, instead of being a rare pleasure, requiring elaborate preparation, may become an everyday amusement, and mix with our common intercourse.—This exercise is among the most healthful.—The body as well as the mind feels its gladdening influence.—No amusement seems more to have a foundation in our nature.—The animation of youth overflows spontaneously in harmonious movements.—The true idea of dancing entitles it to favor.—Its end is to realize perfect grace in motion; and who does not know that a sense of the graceful is one of the higher faculties of our nature.
—William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) American Unitarian Theologian, Poet
On with the dance, let joy be unconfined is my motto, whether there’s a dance to dance or any joy to unconfine.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
Where wildness and disorder are visible in the dance, there Satan, death, and all kinds of mischief are likewise on the floor.
—Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81) German Writer, Philosopher
I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
—T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) American-born British Poet, Dramatist, Literary Critic
And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
—Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese-born American Philosopher, Poet, Painter, Theologian, Sculptor
The Twist was a guided missile, launched from the ghetto into the very heart of suburbia. The Twist succeeded, as politics, religion, and law could never do, in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write on the books.
—Eldridge Cleaver (1935–98) American Author, Activist
In a fiddler’s house all are dancers
—Common Proverb
Dancing begets warmth, which is the parent of wantonness. It is, Sir, the great grandfather of cuckoldom.
—Henry Fielding (1707–54) English Novelist, Dramatist
Nothing is more revealing than movement.
—Martha Graham (1894–1991) American Choreographer
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance. ‘Tis not enough no harshness gives offence. The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744) English Poet
You got to sing like you don’t need the money; Love like you’ll never get hurt; You got to dance like nobody’s watchin’; It’s gotta come from the heart if you want it to work.
—Susanna Clark
Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain.
—Martha Graham (1894–1991) American Choreographer
The girl who can’t dance says the band can’t play.
—Yiddish Proverb
It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind; but when a beginning is made—when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt—it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.
—Jane Austen (1775–1817) English Novelist
The gymnasium of running, walking on stilts, climbing, etc., steels and makes hardy single powers and muscles, but dancing, like a corporeal poesy, embellishes, exercises, and equalizes all the muscles at once.
—Jean Paul (1763–1825) German Novelist, Humorist
We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.
—Japanese Proverb
Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British Sexologist, Physician, Social Reformer
Life is like dancing. If we have a big floor, many people will dance. Some will get angry when the rhythm changes. But life is changing all the time.
—Miguel Angel Ruiz (b.1952) Mexican Spiritualist Author
Learn to dance, not so much for the sake of dancing, as for coming into a room and presenting yourself genteelly and gracefully.—Women, whom you ought to endeavor to please, cannot forgive a vulgar and awkward air and gestures.
—Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) English Statesman, Man of Letters
Dancing is a wonderful training for girls; it’s the first way you learn to guess what a man is going to do before he does it.
—Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American Novelist, Essayist
The dancer’s body is simply the luminous manifestation of the soul.
—Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American Dancer, Choreographer