Motivational Quotes

Music

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

Best Quotes about Music

Good music is very close to primitive language.

Diderot, Denis

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

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

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Conroy, Pat

Without Elvis, none of us could have made it.

Holly, Buddy

If anyone has conducted a Beethoven performance, and then doesn't have to go to an osteopath, then there's something wrong.

Rattle, Simon

There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.

Beecham, Sir Thomas

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

Today, music heralds... the establishment of a society of repetition in which nothing will happen anymore.

Attali, Jacques

10.

It was called the Backstreet Market, and it was just like a local hangout. That was where the kids would drive their cars, hang out with their convertibles and listen to music. That's how we got Backstreet. We put Boys on it, because no matter how old we get, we'll always be boys.

Richardson, Kevin

11.

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

Martin Luther

12.

Music, moody food of us that trade in love.

William Shakespeare

13.

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

Grant, Ulysses S.

14.

I've always felt rock and roll was very, very wholesome music.

Franklin, Aretha

15.

Rock 'n Roll is monotony tinged with hysteria.

Packard, Vance

16.

[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

17.

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

18.

Americans want grungy people, stabbing themselves in the head on stage. They get a bright bunch like us, with deodorant on, they don't get it.

Gallagher, Liam

19.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

20.

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

Pierre Beaumarchais

21.

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

Dietz, Howard

22.

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

23.

A woman's two cents worth is worth two cents in the music business.

Lynn, Loretta

24.

Music is the key to the female heart.

Seume, Johann G.

25.

I wish Frank Sinatra would just shut up and sing.

Bacall, Lauren

26.

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

27.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky

28.

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.

Whiteman, Paul

29.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

30.

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

William Shakespeare

31.

Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.

Mascagni, Pietro

32.

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

Green, Benny

33.

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

George Eliot

34.

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

35.

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)

36.

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

37.

The author's conviction on this day of New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music; but this must not be taken as implying that all good music is dance music or all poetry lyric. Bach and Mozart are never too far from physical movement.

Pound, Ezra

38.

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

39.

The history of a people is found in its songs.

Jellinek, George

40.

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

41.

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

John Erskine

42.

Music was invented to confirm human loneliness.

Durrell, Lawrence

43.

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

44.

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

Robert Fripp

45.

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

46.

Like everything else in nature, music is a becoming, and it becomes its full self, when its sounds and laws are used by intelligent man for the production of harmony, and so made the vehicle of emotion and thought.

Mungers, Theodore

47.

I like Beethoven, especially the poems.

Starr, Ringo

48.

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

Johnson, Samuel

49.

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

Hugo, Victor

50.

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.