Motivational Quotes

Music

Since music is a language with some meaning at least for the immense majority of mankind, although only a tiny minority of people are capable of formulating a meaning in it, and since it is the only language with the contradictory attributes of being at once intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of man, a mystery that all the various disciplines come up against and which holds the key to their progress.

- Levi-Strauss, Claude

Best Quotes about Music

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

Wilson, Colin

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

Billings, Josh

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

Davis, Miles

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

Berlioz says nothing in his music, but he says it magnificently.

Huneker, James G.

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

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

Huxley, Aldous

Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings.

Ed Gardner

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

Aldous Huxley

10.

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

Hugo, Victor

11.

My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.

Martin Luther

12.

Music should never be harmless.

Robertson, Robbie

13.

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

14.

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

William Shakespeare

15.

Country music is three chords and the truth.

Howard, Harlan

16.

Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory.

Beecham, Sir Thomas

17.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Stravinsky, Igor

18.

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

19.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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.

23.

Rock 'n Roll is an asylum for emotional idiots.

Neville, Richard

24.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky

25.

Among all men on the earth bards have a share of honor and reverence, because the muse has taught them songs and loves the race of bards.

Homer

26.

Today, music heralds... the establishment of a society of repetition in which nothing will happen anymore.

Attali, Jacques

27.

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

28.

Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing.

John Erskine

29.

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

30.

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)

31.

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

G. K. Chesterton

32.

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

33.

Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.

Ruskin, John

34.

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

35.

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

George Santayana

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Proverb, Zimbabwe

39.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John

40.

Music, moody food of us that trade in love.

William Shakespeare

41.

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

42.

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

43.

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

44.

Rock 'n Roll is monotony tinged with hysteria.

Packard, Vance

45.

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

Coward, Noel

46.

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

47.

Music is only love looking for words.

Durrell, Lawrence

48.

Hearing often-times the still, sad music of humanity, nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power to chasten and subdue.

Wordsworth, William

49.

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

50.

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

Mencken, H. L.