Let us read and let us dance: two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.
— Voltaire
There is nothing so necessary for men as dancing...Without dancing a man can do nothing...All the disasters of mankind, all the fatal misfortunes that histories are so full of, the blunders of politicians, the miscarriages of great commanders, all this comes from want of skill in dancing...
— Moliere's Dancing Master
(Sachs says: This is not at all exaggerated.)
The world I'm interested in is the one where things are not named.
— Martha Graham
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
A king can be judged by the state of dance during his reign.
— Oriental proverb
Music begins to atrophy when it parts too far from dance.
— Ezra Pound
Dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made.
— Ted Shawn
Dance isn't something that can be explained in words; it has to be danced.
— Paige Arden
I have no desire to prove anything by dancing. I have never used it as an outlet or a means of expressing myself. I just dance. I just put my feet in the air and move them around.
— Fred Astaire
Dance is music made visible.
— George Balanchine
Dancing is like dreaming with your feet!
— Constanze
1. Beginning dancer. Knows nothing.
2. Intermediate dancer. Knows everything. Too good to dance with beginners.
3. Hotshot dancer. Too good to dance with anyone.
4. Advanced dancer. Dances everything. Especially with beginners.
— Attributed to Dick Crum, a folk dance teacher
The truest expression of a people is in it's dance and in it's music. Bodies never lie.
— Agnes de Mille
There is a bit of insanity in dancing that does everybody a great deal of good.
— Edwin Denby
Dancing is the last word in life. In dancing one draws nearer to oneself.
— Jean Dubuffet
Dancing is the poetry of the foot.
— John Dryden
Dancing: The Highest Intelligence in the Freest Body.
— Isadora Duncan
Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is not mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.
— Havelock Ellis
Great artists are people who find ways to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.
— Margot Fonteyn
I have the same opinion of dances that physicians have of mushrooms: the best of them are good for nothing.
— St Francis de Sales
Nothing is more revealing than movement.
— Martha Graham
Learning to walk sets you free. Learning to dance gives you the greatest freedom of all: to express your whole self, the person you are.
— Melissa Hayden
For though man has sorrow and grief in his soul, at once he forgets his dark thoughts and remembers not his troubles. Such is the holy gift of Terpsichore.
— Hesiod, 7th century BC
So you can't dance? Not at all? Not even one step? . . . How can you say that you've taken any trouble to live when you won't even dance?
— Hermann Hesse
Football isn't a contact sport; it's a collision sport. Dancing is a contact sport.
— Vince Lombardi
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.
— Angela Monet (also attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche)
Come and trip it as ye go On the light fantastic toe.— John Milton
We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
I should not believe in a God who does not dance.
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
To dance is to give oneself up to the rhythms of all life.
— Dr. Maya V. Patel
Dance is like life, it exists as you're flitting through it, and when it's over, it's done.
— Jerome Robbins
Talk about dance? Dance is not something to talk about. Dance is to dance.
— Peter Saint James
To those of us with real understanding, dancing is the only pure art form.
— Charles Schulz [in Peanuts (Snoopy speaking)]
To live is to dance. To dance is to live.
— Charles Schulz [in Peanuts (Snoopy speaking)]
There was an old clerk of Columbus Who wearied of totalling numbus, So he moved to East Lansing And spent his time dancing Maxixes, merengues, and rhumbus.— Col. G. L. Sicherman
They who love dancing too much seem to have more brains in their feet than in their head.
— Terence (c. 190 — 159 BC)
Dancing is like bank robbery; it takes split second timing.
— Twyla Tharp
The waltz is a dance of quite too loose a character, and unmarried ladies should refrain from it...very young married ladies may be allowed to waltz if it is very seldom....
— From The Gentleman and Lady's Book of Politeness, 1833
Anyone who says sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain.
— Anonymous
Socrates learned to dance when he was 70 because he felt that an essential part of himself had been neglected.
— Anonymous
Do you not realize that dance is the pure act of metamorphosis?
— Paul Valéry
If you can talk, you can sing. If you can walk, you can dance.
— African Proverb
God respects us when we work, but loves us when we dance.
— Sufi saying
Any problem in the world can be solved by dancing.
— James Brown
To dance is to affirm.
— Bayard Coll
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
— William Butler Yeats, Among School Children
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
Dance is a sort of silent rhetoric.
— Canon Thoinot Arbeau
What do you dance?
— Bantu greeting to a member of another Bantu tribe
The aesthetic pleasure of dance is a secondary reflection of the primary, vital joy of courtship.
— Havelock Ellis
To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.
— Jane Austen
A good education includes learning how to sing and dance.
— Plato, Laws
The way people move is their autobiography in motion.
— Gerry Spence
Dancers are the athletes of God.
— Albert Einstein
No sane man will dance.
— Cicero
When you dance, you don't sweat: you glow.
— Didi
Dance is the mother of all languages.
— R.G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art
Alas! Our dancing days are no more. We wish, however, all those who have a relish for so agreeable and innocent an amusement all the pleasure the season will afford them.
— George Washington on the Value of Dance
The feet may learn the steps, but only the spirit can dance.
— Anonymous
Dance isn't a form, it's a way of life.
— Anonymous
Those hours spent dancing are not deducted from ones life span.
— Anonymous
The man who can't dance thinks the band is no good.
— Polish Proverb
We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams.
— Anonymous
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
Dancing with the feet is one thing, but dancing with the heart is another.
— Anonymous
The people who do not dance are the dead.
— Jerry Rose, Dance Caravan
You know you're dancing when tears of pain and happiness blend in with your sweat.
— Anonymous
Dance is the hidden language of the soul and the body.
— Martha Graham
Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we're here we should dance.
— Anonymous
We do not always dance because we are happy, but we dance and cannot help but become happy.
— Anonymous
Someone need not be perfect to be a great dancer — feeling a soul is more important than what the body can do.
— Marcia Haydée, Dance Magazine
Dancers offer us our only earthly chance to catch a glimpse of the angelic host.
— Anonymous
Work like you don't need the money.
— Anonymous
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like there's nobody watching.
The one important thing I have learnt over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking oneself seriously. The first is imperative and the second disastrous.
— Margot Fonteyn
Freedom to a dancer means discipline. That is what technique is for: liberation.
— Martha Graham
Technique is what you fall back on when you run out of inspiration.
— Rudolf Nureyev
The one unbreakable rule of couples dancing is that the partners must move interdependently, as a unit.
— Anonymous
What we hope ever to do with ease, we must first learn to do with diligence.
— Samuel Johnson
The only reason for mastering technique is to make sure the body does not stand in the way of the soul's expression.
— La Meri
Master technique and then forget about it and be natural.
— Anna Pavlova
You need the courage to seem foolish and to fail.
— Steven A. Rosenberg (1993)
So, I think I would say, enjoy the process of learning to dance. The process of our profession, and not its final achievement, is the heart and soul of dance.
— Jacques d'Amboise
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance.
— Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism
Dancers are instruments, like a piano the choreographer plays.
— George Balanchine
When you take dancing lessons, you learn steps and you learn steps and you learn steps. It can go on for a long time. And then one day, you just learn to dance, and it is so different.
— Bill Austin
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton