Motivational Quotes

Music

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.

- G. K. Chesterton

Best Quotes about Music

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

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

Huneker, James G.

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

Franklin, Aretha

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

Wilson, Colin

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

Lennon, John

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

Rock 'n Roll is monotony tinged with hysteria.

Packard, Vance

A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.

Giles, Henry

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

Dietz, Howard

10.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

11.

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

12.

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

13.

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.

G. K. Chesterton

14.

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

15.

Without Elvis, none of us could have made it.

Holly, Buddy

16.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Conroy, Pat

17.

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

18.

Music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good or bad to the deaf.

Spinoza, Baruch (Benedict de)

19.

I wish Frank Sinatra would just shut up and sing.

Bacall, Lauren

20.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

21.

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

22.

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

Davis, Miles

23.

It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness and of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature, and everlasting beauty of monotony.

Britten, Benjamin

24.

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)

25.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

26.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Stravinsky, Igor

27.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw

28.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

29.

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

30.

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

Billings, Josh

31.

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

32.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

33.

Music, moody food of us that trade in love.

William Shakespeare

34.

Song is the heroics of speech.

Carlyle, Thomas

35.

You're talking to someone who really understands rock music.

Gore, Tipper

36.

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

Brown, James

37.

I was a veteran before I was a teenager.

Jackson, Michael

38.

Good music is very close to primitive language.

Diderot, Denis

39.

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

Pierre Beaumarchais

40.

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.

Whiteman, Paul

41.

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

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

44.

You are the music while the music lasts.

Eliot, T. S.

45.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

Aldous Huxley

46.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

47.

Music should never be harmless.

Robertson, Robbie

48.

I hate music, especially when it's played.

Jimmy Durante

49.

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

50.

I'm not going to be joining ZZ Top. You know they can't play my stuff. It's too complicated.

Brown, James