Motivational Quotes

Music

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

- George Bernard Shaw

Best Quotes about Music

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

Zappa, Frank

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

Coward, Noel

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

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

Lynn, Loretta

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

Dan Rather

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

John Erskine

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

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

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

Johnson, Samuel

10.

Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune.

Kin Hubbard

11.

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

12.

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

Hugo, Victor

13.

The history of a people is found in its songs.

Jellinek, George

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Rossini, Gioacchino Antonio

18.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

19.

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

20.

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

Wilson, Colin

21.

A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.

Giles, Henry

22.

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

Ruskin, John

23.

Rock 'n Roll is monotony tinged with hysteria.

Packard, Vance

24.

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

25.

Music should never be harmless.

Robertson, Robbie

26.

Words are poor interpreters in the realms of emotion. When all words end, music begins; when they suggest, it realizes; and hence is the secret of its strange, inexpressible power.

Haweis, H. R.

27.

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

Davis, Miles

28.

Just as certain selections of music will nourish your physical body and your emotional layer, so other musical works will bring greater health to your mind.

Lingerman, Hal A.

29.

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

Gibbons, Billy

30.

Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.

George Bernard Shaw

31.

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

Pavarotti, Luciano

32.

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

Martin Luther

33.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

34.

The most perfect expression of human behavior is a string quartet.

Tate, Jeffrey

35.

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

36.

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music; they should be taught to love it instead.

Stravinsky, Igor

37.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

38.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Conroy, Pat

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

I think my fans will follow me into our combined old age. Real musicians and real fans stay together for a long, long time.

Raitt, Bonnie

43.

I would advise you to keep your overhead down; avoid a major drug habit; play everyday, and take it in front of other people. They need to hear it, and you need them to hear it.

Taylor, James

44.

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

Mencken, H. L.

45.

Music was invented to confirm human loneliness.

Durrell, Lawrence

46.

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

Lutoslawski, Witold

47.

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.