Motivational Quotes

Music

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

Best Quotes about Music

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

Billings, Josh

The new sound-sphere is global. It ripples at great speed across languages, ideologies, frontiers and races. The economics of this musical Esperanto is staggering. Rock and pop breed concentric worlds of fashion, setting and life-style. Popular music has brought with it sociologies of private and public manner, of group solidarity. The politics of Eden come loud.

Steiner, George

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

Schnabel, Artur

Music is the vernacular of the human soul.

Latham, Geoffrey

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

George Eliot

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

Music and woman I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is.

Pepys, Samuel

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

Lynn, Loretta

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

Johnson, Samuel

10.

Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

11.

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

12.

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

Cocteau, Jean

13.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

14.

Music like religion, unconditionally brings in its train all the moral virtues to the heart it enters, even though that heart is not in the least worthy.

Jean Baptiste Montegut

15.

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

16.

I wish Frank Sinatra would just shut up and sing.

Bacall, Lauren

17.

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

George Bernard Shaw

18.

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

19.

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

Rossini, Gioacchino Antonio

20.

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

Woody Allen

21.

A good composer is slowly discovered a bad composer is slowly found out.

Newman, Ernest

22.

Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay buried in the memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh. A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me.

Genet, Jean

23.

I have no pleasure in any man who despises music. It is no invention of ours: it is a gift of God. I place it next to theology. Satan hates music: he knows how it drives the evil spirit out of us.

Luther, Martin

24.

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

Oscar Wilde

25.

A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.

Giles, Henry

26.

[T]here's no bad day that can't be overcome by listening to a barbershop quartet; this is just truth, plain and simple.

Chuck Sigars

27.

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

28.

Music is spiritual. The music business is not.

Morrison, Van

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

You are the music while the music lasts.

Eliot, T. S.

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

38.

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

39.

Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.

Sousa, John Philip

40.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John

41.

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

G. K. Chesterton

42.

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.