Motivational Quotes

Music

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

Best Quotes about Music

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

Edgar Wilson Nye

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

Auden, W. H.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Conroy, Pat

Music is the vernacular of the human soul.

Latham, Geoffrey

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

Miller, Henry

Music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.

Duffecy, James

Sounds like the blues are composed of feeling, finesse, and fear.

Gibbons, Billy

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

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

Brown, James

10.

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)

11.

There once was a brainy baboon who always breathed down a bassoon for he said, It appears that in billions of years I shall certainly hit on a tune.

Pound, Ezra

12.

When Mozart was composing at the end of the eighteenth century, the city of Vienna was so quiet that fire alarms could be given verbally, by a shouting watchman mounted on top of St. Stefan's Cathedral. In twentieth-century society, the noise level is such that it keeps knocking our bodies out of tune and out of their natural rhythms. This ever-increasing assault of sound upon our ears, minds, and bodies adds to the stress load of civilized beings trying to live in a highly complex environment.

Halpern, Steven

13.

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

14.

Music is the key to the female heart.

Seume, Johann G.

15.

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

Dietz, Howard

16.

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

Wilson, Colin

17.

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

Ruskin, John

18.

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

Luther, Martin

19.

I was a veteran before I was a teenager.

Jackson, Michael

20.

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

Cocteau, Jean

21.

People whose sensibility is destroyed by music in trains, airports, lifts, cannot concentrate on a Beethoven Quartet.

Lutoslawski, Witold

22.

I like Beethoven, especially the poems.

Starr, Ringo

23.

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

Wilde, Oscar

24.

Alas! all music jars when the soul's out of tune.

Cervantes, Miguel De

25.

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

26.

Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.

Mascagni, Pietro

27.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

28.

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

29.

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

30.

Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory.

Beecham, Sir Thomas

31.

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

32.

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

33.

In sweet music is such art: killing care and grief of heart fall asleep, or hearing, die.

William Shakespeare

34.

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

35.

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

Schnabel, Artur

36.

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

Pavarotti, Luciano

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.

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

Billings, Josh

39.

Music causes us to think eloquently.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

40.

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

Ed Gardner

41.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Johnson, Samuel

42.

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

43.

If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.

John Cage

44.

I can't listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.

Woody Allen

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Addison, Joseph

48.

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

49.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

Camus, Albert

50.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John