Motivational Quotes

Music

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.

- Auden, W. H.

Best Quotes about Music

The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. The motions of his spirit are dull as night, and his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted.

Shakespeare, William

We are aware that the conductor is not really making the music, it is making him -- if he is relaxed, open and attuned, then the invisible will take possession of him; through him, it will reach us.

Brook, Peter (Stephen Paul)

Music expresses that which can not be said and on which it is impossible to be silent

Hugo, Victor

You are the music while the music lasts.

Eliot, T. S.

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

[T]here's no bad day that can't be overcome by listening to a barbershop quartet; this is just truth, plain and simple.

Chuck Sigars

Music was invented to confirm human loneliness.

Durrell, Lawrence

Canned music is like audible wallpaper.

Cooke, Alistair

I am fond of music I think because it is so amoral. Everything else is moral and I am after something that isn't. I have always found moralizing intolerable.

Hesse, Hermann

10.

Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.

Wilde, Oscar

11.

They said, You have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are. The man replied, Things as they are changed upon a blue guitar.

Stevens, Wallace

12.

The new sound-sphere is global. It ripples at great speed across languages, ideologies, frontiers and races. The economics of this musical Esperanto is staggering. Rock and pop breed concentric worlds of fashion, setting and life-style. Popular music has brought with it sociologies of private and public manner, of group solidarity. The politics of Eden come loud.

Steiner, George

13.

There is something suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is, by her nature, equivocal. I shall not be going too far in saying at once that she is politically suspect.

Mann, Thomas

14.

There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.

George Eliot

15.

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

Martin Luther

16.

Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing.

John Erskine

17.

I resent performing for frisking idiots who don't know anything.

Lennon, John

18.

Music, the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heaven we have below.

Addison, Joseph

19.

I know only two tunes. One them is Yankee Doodle and the other isn't.

Grant, Ulysses S.

20.

Mozart is sweet sunshine.

Dvorak, Antonin

21.

Without music, life would be an error. The German imagines even God singing songs

Nietzsche, Friedrich

22.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Conroy, Pat

23.

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

24.

Music is the fourth great material want, first food, then clothes, then shelter, then music.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

25.

Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra, not choreography to the audience.

Szell, George

26.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John

27.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

28.

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

Edgar Wilson Nye

29.

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

30.

People compose for many reasons: to become immortal; because the pianoforte happens to be open; because they want to become a millionaire; because of the praise of friends; because they have looked into a pair of beautiful eyes; for no reason whatsoever.

Schumann, Robert

31.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

32.

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

Huneker, James G.

33.

I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It's something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music.

Joel, Billy

34.

Music is the vernacular of the human soul.

Latham, Geoffrey

35.

A symphony is a stage play with the parts written for instruments instead of for actors.

Wilson, Colin

36.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

37.

I've outdone anyone you can name -- Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500.

Brown, James

38.

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

Dietz, Howard

39.

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

George Santayana

40.

I can sing, and speak to him in many sorts of music.

William Shakespeare

41.

Music and dancing (the more the pity) have become so closely associated with ideas of riot and debauchery among the less cultivated classes, that a taste for them, for their own sakes, can hardly be said to exist, and before they can be recommended as innocent or safe amusements, a very great change of ideas must take place.

Herschel, Sir John

42.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw

43.

A lot of people are singing about how screwed up the world is, and I don't think that everybody wants to hear about that all the time.

Carey, Mariah

44.

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

Wilde, Oscar

45.

There is two kinds of music the good and bad. I play the good kind.

Armstrong, Louis

46.

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.

Auden, W. H.

47.

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.

Whiteman, Paul

48.

The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.

Thoreau, Henry David

49.

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

50.

Music of all the arts has the most influence on the passions and the legislator should give it the greatest encouragement.

Bonaparte, Napoleon