We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life. This is the function of the American dance.
—Martha Graham (1894–1991) American Choreographer
I was exceedingly delighted with the waltz, and also with the polka. These differ in name, but there the difference ceases.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Great dancers are not great because of their technique; they are great because of their passion.
—Martha Graham (1894–1991) American Choreographer
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 Activist, Writer
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
Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain.
—Martha Graham (1894–1991) American Choreographer
We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.
—Japanese Proverb
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, Journalist, Poet, Essayist
They who love dancing too much seem to have more brains in their feet than in their head.
—Terence (c.195–159 BCE) Roman Comic Dramatist
The girl who can’t dance says the band can’t play.
—Yiddish Proverb
I just put my feet in the air and move them around.
—Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American Actor, Dancer, Singer
Dancing with the feet is one thing, but dancing with the heart is another.
—Unknown
Well was it said, by a man of sagacity, that dancing was a sort of privileged and reputable folly, and that the best way to be convinced of this was to close the ears and judge of it by the eyes alone.
—Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81) German Writer, Philosopher
A merry, dancing, drinking, laughing, quaffing, and unthinking time.
—John Dryden (1631–1700) English Poet, Literary Critic, Playwright
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
—Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese-American Philosopher, Poet, Sculptor
The dancer’s body is simply the luminous manifestation of the soul.
—Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American Dancer, Choreographer
To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.
—Jane Austen (1775–1817) English Novelist
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.
—Anonymous
Dancing is the poetry of the foot.
—John Dryden (1631–1700) English Poet, Literary Critic, Playwright
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
In a fiddler’s house all are dancers.
—Common Proverb
You can dance anywhere, even if only in your heart.
—Indian Proverb
Dance is the landscape of a man’s soul.
—Indian Proverb
I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his “divine service.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
Before I was born my mother was in great agony of spirit and in a tragic situation. She could take no food except iced oysters and champagne. If people ask me when I began to dance, I reply, In my mother’s womb, probably as a result of the oysters and champagne – the food of Aphrodite.
—Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American Dancer, Choreographer
How inimitably graceful children are in general before they learn to dance!
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
Those who can’t dance say the music is no good.
—Jamaican Proverb
Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery.
—Martha Graham (1894–1991) American Choreographer
When the music changes, so does the dance.
—African Proverb
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