Motivational Quotes

Music

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking,'Is there a meaning to music?'My answer would be,'Yes.'And'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?'My answer to that would be,'No.'

- Aaron Copland

Best Quotes about Music

Medicine to produce health must examine disease; and music, to create harmony must investigate discord.

Plutarch

Music like religion, unconditionally brings in its train all the moral virtues to the heart it enters, even though that heart is not in the least worthy.

Jean Baptiste Montegut

Among all men on the earth bards have a share of honor and reverence, because the muse has taught them songs and loves the race of bards.

Homer

The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is be an American and then write any kind of music you wish.

Virgil Thomson

When griping grief the heart doth wound, and doleful dumps the mind opresses, then music, with her silver sound, with speedy help doth lend redress.

William Shakespeare

All my concerts had no sounds in them; they were completely silent. People had to make up their own music in their minds!

Yoko Ono

Rock 'n Roll is an asylum for emotional idiots.

Neville, Richard

If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation.

Wilde, Oscar

Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.

Carlyle, Thomas

10.

One is hardly sensible of fatigue while he marches to music.

Carlyle, Thomas

11.

If we were all determined to play the first violin we should never have an ensemble. Therefore, respect every musician in his proper place.

Schumann, Robert

12.

If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.

Carlyle, Thomas

13.

Since music is a language with some meaning at least for the immense majority of mankind, although only a tiny minority of people are capable of formulating a meaning in it, and since it is the only language with the contradictory attributes of being at once intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of man, a mystery that all the various disciplines come up against and which holds the key to their progress.

Levi-Strauss, Claude

14.

All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.

Cocteau, Jean

15.

Brass bands are all very well in their place - outdoors and several miles away.

Sir Thomas Beecham

16.

There's a basic rule which runs through all kinds of music, kind of an unwritten rule. I don't know what it is. But I've got it.

Wood, Ron

17.

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

Edgar Wilson Nye

18.

The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

Mencken, H. L.

19.

Song is the heroics of speech.

Carlyle, Thomas

20.

A good composer is slowly discovered a bad composer is slowly found out.

Newman, Ernest

21.

Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. We listen to Bach transfixed because this is listening to a human mind.

Thomas, Lewis

22.

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music; they should be taught to love it instead.

Stravinsky, Igor

23.

A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.

Sir Thomas Beecham

24.

The manner in which Americans consume music has a lot to do with leaving it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles, like the score of a movie --it's consumed that way without any regard for how and why it's made.

Zappa, Frank

25.

Ah, music. A magic beyond all we do here!

J. K. Rowling

26.

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

Einstein, Albert

27.

Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune.

Kin Hubbard

28.

If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die. That strain again! it had a dying fall: O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour!

William Shakespeare

29.

Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.

Miller, Henry

30.

Composers shouldn't think too much -- it interferes with their plagiarism.

Dietz, Howard

31.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

Plato

32.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw

33.

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

34.

Berlioz says nothing in his music, but he says it magnificently.

Huneker, James G.

35.

The musical emotion springs precisely from the fact that at each moment the composer withholds or adds more or less than the listener anticipates on the basis of a pattern that he thinks he can guess, but that he is incapable of wholly divining. If the composer withholds more than we anticipate, we experience a delicious falling sensation; we feel we have been torn from a stable point on the musical ladder and thrust into the void. When the composer withholds less, the opposite occurs: he forces us to perform gymnastic exercises more skillful than our own.

Levi-Strauss, Claude

36.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears form the eyes of woman.

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

37.

A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.

Green, Benny

38.

My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.

Martin Luther

39.

You're talking to someone who really understands rock music.

Gore, Tipper

40.

If you can walk you can dance. If you can talk you can sing.

Proverb, Zimbabwe

41.

It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of culture.

Cage, John

42.

Mozart is sweet sunshine.

Dvorak, Antonin

43.

Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible.

Johnson, Samuel

44.

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.

G. K. Chesterton

45.

If music be the food of love, play on; give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die.

William Shakespeare

46.

I have no pleasure in any man who despises music. It is no invention of ours: it is a gift of God. I place it next to theology. Satan hates music: he knows how it drives the evil spirit out of us.

Luther, Martin

47.

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

Zappa, Frank

48.

Music is essentially useless, as life is: but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.

George Santayana

49.

The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes --ah, that is where the art resides.

Schnabel, Artur

50.

Music should never be harmless.