Motivational Quotes

Music

The high note is not the only thing.

- Domingo, Placido

Best Quotes about Music

Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes.

Cosby, Bill

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

Johnson, James Weldon

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

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

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

The history of a people is found in its songs.

Jellinek, George

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

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

Green, Benny

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.

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

Robert Fripp

12.

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.

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.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Rattle, Simon

17.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

18.

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

19.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Johnson, Samuel

20.

Good music is very close to primitive language.

Diderot, Denis

21.

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

Pierre Beaumarchais

22.

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

Franklin, Aretha

23.

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

24.

Music should never be harmless.

Robertson, Robbie

25.

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

Davis, Miles

26.

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)

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

George Santayana

30.

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

Edgar Wilson Nye

31.

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

Lynn, Loretta

32.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

33.

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

George Eliot

34.

Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be absolutely deaf.

Wilde, Oscar

35.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky

36.

Song is the heroics of speech.

Carlyle, Thomas

37.

I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand.

Sir Edward Appleton

38.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

39.

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

40.

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

Brown, James

41.

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

42.

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.

Plato

43.

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.

George Eliot

44.

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

Winter, Arthur

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

48.

I hate music, especially when it's played.

Jimmy Durante

49.

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.