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There are two kinds of worries – those you can do something about and those you can’t. Don’t spend any time on the latter.

Duke Ellington

A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Financial Loss Musical Profit
If you have a great band with a mediocre drummer, you have a mediocre band. If you have a mediocre band with a great drummer, you have a great band!
DUKE ELLINGTON

Greatness Mediocre Musician Yourself
Everyone prays in their own language, and there is no language that God does not understand.
DUKE ELLINGTON

God Language Prayer Understand
There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Goodness Kind Music
The problem of expressing the contributions that Benny Carter has made to popular music is so tremendous it completely fazes me, so extraordinary a musician is he.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Contribution Expression Music Myself Problem
A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Best Chance Problem Yourself
Simplicity is a most complex form.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Complex Form Simplicity
My mother told me I was blessed, and I have always taken her word for it. Being born of – or reincarnated from – royalty is nothing Like being blessed. Royalty is inherited from another human being; blessedness comes from God.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Blessing Human Inheritance Mom Myself Royalty
I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Appearance Interest Myself Realize Right
Music, of course, is what I hear and something that I more or less live by. It’s not an occupation or profession, it’s a compulsion.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Live Music Myself Occupation Profession
New York is a place where the rich walk, the poor drive Cadillacs, and beggars die of malnutrition with thousands of dollars hidden in their mattresses.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Death Hide Place Walk
The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern’ art. What is more African than a Picasso?
DUKE ELLINGTON

Art Creativity Modern
Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Music Sing Song Sweet
Of the One O’Clock Lab Band after hearing their performance, and sitting in with them at the White House: “I wish it were mine”.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Hear Myself Performance
Love is indescribable and unconditional. I could tell you a thousand things that it is not, but not one that it is. Either you have it or you haven’t; there’s no proof of it.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Evidence Love Myself Yourself
There is nothing to keeping a band together. You simply have to have a gimmick, and the gimmick I use is to pay them money!
DUKE ELLINGTON

Money Myself Pay Togetherness

There are two kinds of worries – those you can do something about and those you can’t. Don’t spend any time on the latter.

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There are two kinds of worries – those you can do something about and those you can’t. Don’t spend any time on the latter.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Duke Ellington Quotes