Maria Augusta von Trapp

Our age has become so mechanical that this has also affected our recreation. People have gotten used to sitting down and watching a movie, a ball game, a television set. It may be good once in a while, but it certainly is not good all the time. Our own faculties, our imagination, our memory, the ability to do things with our mind and our hands__hey need to be exercised. If we become too passive, we get dissatisfied.

One of the greatest things in human life is the ability to make plans. Even if they never come true-the joy of anticipating is irrevocably yours. That way one can live many more than just one life.

We are not poor. We just don't have any money!

Music- what a powerful instrument, what a mighty weapon!

Music acts like a magic key, to which the most tightly closed heart opens.

Christianity nowadays is like a big household where many cousins live under the same roof. They all belong to the same clan, but at times they have very different ideas about how to run their family affairs. Some of them, for instance, have no use for any outside devotion. God is a spirit, and He wants to be worshipped in spirit only, they say. Consequently, they have dispensed with all liturgy. They don__ want any distracting ceremonies, no incense, no vestments, no music, no pictures and images, not even sacraments__nly the service of the spirit.The trouble is, however, that as long as we live here on earth, we simply are not pure spirits, but we have also a body, and in that body, a very human heart; and this heart needs outward signs of its inward affections. That is why we embrace and kiss the one we love; and the more we love, the more ardently we press him to this very heart__omehow it seems as if these cousins had overlooked that fact. But you can__ cheat the heart; it knows what it wants, and it knows how to get it.

We learned the shocking truth that "home" isn't necessarily a certain spot on earth. It must be a place where you can "feel" at home, which means "free" to us.