Motivational Quotes

Music

Music hath the charm to soothe a savage beast, but I'd try a revolver first.

- Billings, Josh

Best Quotes about Music

Good music is very close to primitive language.

Diderot, Denis

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

Next to theology I give music the highest place of honor.

Luther, Martin

Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods; Since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage, But music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.

William Shakespeare

Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.

Ruskin, John

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

Schnabel, Artur

Give me a laundry list and I'll set it to music.

Rossini, Gioacchino Antonio

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Stravinsky, Igor

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)

10.

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

11.

Music is a discipline, and a mistress of order and good manners, she makes the people milder and gentler, more moral and more reasonable.

Martin Luther

12.

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

Green, Benny

13.

True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today.

Gershwin, George

14.

To know the cause why music was ordain'd! Was it not to refresh the mind of a man after his studies or his usual pain?

William Shakespeare

15.

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

16.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

17.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw

18.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Conroy, Pat

19.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky

20.

Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings.

Ed Gardner

21.

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

Dietz, Howard

22.

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

Grant, Ulysses S.

23.

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

24.

Music causes us to think eloquently.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

25.

Music is a readily available, highly effective tool that you use to improve both your cognitive and physical abilities.

Winter, Arthur

26.

I think no woman I have had ever gave me so sweet a moment, or at so light a price, as the moment I owe to a newly heard musical phrase.

Stendhal, Henri B.

27.

You don't need any brains to listen to music.

Pavarotti, Luciano

28.

The effects of good music are not just because it's new; on the contrary music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

29.

An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger.

Dan Rather

30.

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

31.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

32.

If a thing isn't worth saying, you sing it.

Pierre Beaumarchais

33.

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

34.

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

Johnson, Samuel

35.

I think everyone should have a Beatles phase in their life. I think it's part of growing up in the Western world.

Jadelr and Cristina Cordova

36.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

37.

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

38.

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

Wilson, Colin

39.

It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives it most distinctive characteristics.

Johnson, James Weldon

40.

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

41.

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

42.

We all drew on the comfort which is given out by the major works of Mozart, which is as real and material as the warmth given up by a glass of brandy.

West, Rebecca

43.

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

Newman, Ernest

44.

Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay buried in the memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh. A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me.

Genet, Jean

45.

I was a veteran before I was a teenager.

Jackson, Michael

46.

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

47.

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

Brown, James

48.

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

49.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

50.

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

Mencken, H. L.