To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking.
—Agnes de Mille (1905–93) American Dancer, Choreographer
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 Essayist, Physician
I just put my feet in the air and move them around.
—Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American Actor, Dancer, Singer
Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Nothing is more revealing than movement.
—Martha Graham (1894–1991) American Choreographer
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.
—Anonymous
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 dancer’s body is simply the luminous manifestation of the soul.
—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
He who cannot dance says the stage is not ready
—Indian Proverb
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
—Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
Custom has made dancing sometimes necessary for a young man; therefore mind it while you learn it, that you may learn to do it well, and not be ridiculous, though in a ridiculous act.
—Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) English Statesman, Man of Letters
I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.
—Japanese Proverb
Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.
—Dave Barry (b.1947) American Humorist, Columnist
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
Dancing is the poetry of the foot.
—John Dryden (1631–1700) English Poet, Literary Critic, Playwright
The real American type can never be a ballet dancer. The legs are too long, the body too supple and the spirit too free for this school of affected grace and toe walking.
—Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American Dancer, Choreographer
Either dance well or quit the ballroom.
—Greek Proverb
Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain.
—Martha Graham (1894–1991) American Choreographer
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
Great dancers are not great because of their technique; they are great because of their passion.
—Martha Graham (1894–1991) American Choreographer
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
Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart.
—Martha Graham (1894–1991) American Choreographer
We ought to dance with rapture that we might be alive… and part of the living, incarnate cosmos.
—D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Literary Critic
Dancing begets warmth, which is the parent of wantonness. It is, Sir, the great grandfather of cuckoldom.
—Henry Fielding (1707–54) English Novelist, Dramatist
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
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
The only dance masters I could have were Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Walt Whitman and Nietzsche.
—Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American Dancer, Choreographer
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