Motivational Quotes

Music

My music is best understood by children and animals.

- Igor Stravinsky

Best Quotes about Music

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John

[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

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

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

Music is only love looking for words.

Durrell, Lawrence

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

I was a veteran before I was a teenager.

Jackson, Michael

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

Mencken, H. L.

One is hardly sensible of fatigue while he marches to music.

Carlyle, Thomas

10.

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

11.

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.

Whiteman, Paul

12.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Johnson, Samuel

13.

When griping grief the heart doth wound, and doleful dumps the mind opresses, then music, with her silver sound, with speedy help doth lend redress.

William Shakespeare

14.

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

15.

The history of a people is found in its songs.

Jellinek, George

16.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

17.

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

Beerbohm, Sir Max

18.

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

19.

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

Gore, Tipper

20.

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

Johnson, Samuel

21.

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

Coward, Noel

22.

Music causes us to think eloquently.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

23.

Country music is three chords and the truth.

Howard, Harlan

24.

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

George Eliot

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Franklin, Aretha

28.

I wish Frank Sinatra would just shut up and sing.

Bacall, Lauren

29.

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

George Santayana

30.

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

William Shakespeare

31.

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

Johnson, James Weldon

32.

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

Winter, Arthur

33.

Without Elvis, none of us could have made it.

Holly, Buddy

34.

Music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.

Duffecy, James

35.

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

36.

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

Robert Fripp

37.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Spinoza, Baruch (Benedict de)

41.

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

42.

Next to theology I give music the highest place of honor.

Luther, Martin

43.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky

44.

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

45.

Rock 'n Roll is an asylum for emotional idiots.

Neville, Richard

46.

If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.

John Cage

47.

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

Wilson, Colin

48.

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

Lennon, John

49.

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

50.

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.