Motivational Quotes

Music

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

- George Bernard Shaw

Best Quotes about Music

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

Davis, Miles

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

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

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

Thoreau, Henry David

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

Kin Hubbard

I hate music, especially when it's played.

Jimmy Durante

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

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

Addison, Joseph

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

10.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky

11.

The history of a people is found in its songs.

Jellinek, George

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Billings, Josh

15.

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

Lynn, Loretta

16.

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

17.

Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.

Oscar Wilde

18.

Music should never be harmless.

Robertson, Robbie

19.

We fight our way through the massed and leveled collective safe taste of the Top 40, just looking for a little something we can call our own. But when we find it and jam the radio to hear it again it isn't just ours -- it is a link to thousands of others who are sharing it with us. As a matter of a single song this might mean very little; as culture, as a way of life, you can't beat it.

Marcus, Greil

20.

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

21.

Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.

Wilde, Oscar

22.

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.

Whiteman, Paul

23.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Conroy, Pat

24.

I often thought that if there had been a good rap group around in those days, I might have chosen a career in music instead of politics.

Nixon, Richard M.

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Zappa, Frank

28.

She was one of those people who said I don't know anything about music, but I know what I like.

Beerbohm, Sir Max

29.

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

Johnson, Samuel

30.

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

31.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw

32.

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

33.

Canned music is like audible wallpaper.

Cooke, Alistair

34.

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

Aldous Huxley

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.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

37.

All my concerts had no sounds in them; they were completely silent. People had to make up their own music in their minds!

Yoko Ono

38.

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

39.

It's a marvelous feeling when someone says I want to do this song of yours because they've connected to it. That's what I'm after.

Carpenter, Mary Chapin

40.

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

Wilson, Colin

41.

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

42.

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

43.

Music is only love looking for words.

Durrell, Lawrence

44.

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

Robert Fripp

45.

You are the music while the music lasts.

Eliot, T. S.

46.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Stravinsky, Igor

47.

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

48.

Music, moody food of us that trade in love.

William Shakespeare

49.

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

50.

Music is a discipline, and a mistress of order and good manners, she makes the people milder and gentler, more moral and more reasonable.

Martin Luther