Motivational Quotes

Music

Without Elvis, none of us could have made it.

- Holly, Buddy

Best Quotes about Music

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

George Santayana

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

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

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

A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.

Green, Benny

Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra, not choreography to the audience.

Szell, George

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

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.

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

10.

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

11.

Rock 'n Roll is an asylum for emotional idiots.

Neville, Richard

12.

Song is the heroics of speech.

Carlyle, Thomas

13.

If you can walk you can dance. If you can talk you can sing.

Proverb, Zimbabwe

14.

Mozart is sweet sunshine.

Dvorak, Antonin

15.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

16.

Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be absolutely deaf.

Wilde, Oscar

17.

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

18.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Johnson, Samuel

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.

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

21.

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

Dan Rather

22.

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

Pepys, Samuel

23.

Country music is three chords and the truth.

Howard, Harlan

24.

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

Pavarotti, Luciano

25.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

26.

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

Zappa, Frank

27.

But then there's a moment like tonight, a profound and transcendent experience, the feeling as if a door has opened, and it's all because of that instrument, that incredible, magical instrument.

Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

28.

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

29.

Music is the key to the female heart.

Seume, Johann G.

30.

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

Gore, Tipper

31.

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

Gibbons, Billy

32.

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

Spinoza, Baruch (Benedict de)

33.

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

Edgar Wilson Nye

34.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky

35.

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

Franklin, Aretha

36.

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

37.

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

Schnabel, Artur

38.

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

Pierre Beaumarchais

39.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

40.

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.

41.

[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

42.

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

Brown, James

43.

I hate music, especially when it's played.

Jimmy Durante

44.

In sweet music is such art: killing care and grief of heart fall asleep, or hearing, die.

William Shakespeare

45.

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

46.

It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives it most distinctive characteristics.

Johnson, James Weldon

47.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

48.

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

49.

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

50.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Conroy, Pat