Motivational Quotes

Music

It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites --opposite bents, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where there is no polarity --where energies flow smoothly in one direction --there will be much doing but no music.

- Hoffer, Eric

Best Quotes about Music

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

Plato

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

Wilson, Colin

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.

I know only two tunes. One them is Yankee Doodle and the other isn't.

Grant, Ulysses S.

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

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

Tate, Jeffrey

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

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

Huxley, Aldous

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

10.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

11.

The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes.

Beecham, Sir Thomas

12.

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

Aldous Huxley

13.

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

14.

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

Hugo, Victor

15.

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

Winter, Arthur

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.

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

18.

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

19.

You are the music while the music lasts.

Eliot, T. S.

20.

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

21.

I like Beethoven, especially the poems.

Starr, Ringo

22.

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

23.

Hoffer, Eric

24.

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

Schnabel, Artur

25.

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

Sousa, John Philip

26.

Ah, music. A magic beyond all we do here!

J. K. Rowling

27.

The high note is not the only thing.

Domingo, Placido

28.

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

Lennon, John

29.

Mozart is sweet sunshine.

Dvorak, Antonin

30.

Rock 'n Roll is monotony tinged with hysteria.

Packard, Vance

31.

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

Gore, Tipper

32.

A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.

Giles, Henry

33.

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)

34.

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

Newman, Ernest

35.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

36.

Music is only love looking for words.

Durrell, Lawrence

37.

People compose for many reasons: to become immortal; because the pianoforte happens to be open; because they want to become a millionaire; because of the praise of friends; because they have looked into a pair of beautiful eyes; for no reason whatsoever.

Schumann, Robert

38.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

39.

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

Oscar Wilde

40.

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

41.

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

Robert Fripp

42.

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

Kin Hubbard

43.

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

44.

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

Coward, Noel

45.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.

Carlyle, Thomas

46.

To know the cause why music was ordain'd! Was it not to refresh the mind of a man after his studies or his usual pain?

William Shakespeare

47.

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

48.

I can sing, and speak to him in many sorts of music.

William Shakespeare

49.

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

Pierre Beaumarchais

50.

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

George Santayana