Motivational Quotes

Music

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

Best Quotes about Music

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

Edgar Wilson Nye

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

Johnson, James Weldon

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

They said, You have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are. The man replied, Things as they are changed upon a blue guitar.

Stevens, Wallace

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

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

Lynn, Loretta

Levi-Strauss, Claude

I wish Frank Sinatra would just shut up and sing.

Bacall, Lauren

10.

Composers shouldn't think too much -- it interferes with their plagiarism.

Dietz, Howard

11.

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

Winter, Arthur

12.

The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is be an American and then write any kind of music you wish.

Virgil Thomson

13.

Rock 'n Roll is an asylum for emotional idiots.

Neville, Richard

14.

Music is the fourth great material want, first food, then clothes, then shelter, then music.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

15.

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

Davis, Miles

16.

Music is only love looking for words.

Durrell, Lawrence

17.

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.

18.

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

19.

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

Franklin, Aretha

20.

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.

Whiteman, Paul

21.

I hate music, especially when it's played.

Jimmy Durante

22.

I like Beethoven, especially the poems.

Starr, Ringo

23.

The effects of good music are not just because it's new; on the contrary music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

28.

Song is the heroics of speech.

Carlyle, Thomas

29.

Music, moody food of us that trade in love.

William Shakespeare

30.

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

31.

The high note is not the only thing.

Domingo, Placido

32.

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

Dan Rather

33.

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.

34.

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

William Shakespeare

35.

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

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.

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

Szell, George

38.

Without Elvis, none of us could have made it.

Holly, Buddy

39.

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

40.

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.

41.

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

Aldous Huxley

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Medicine to produce health must examine disease; and music, to create harmony must investigate discord.

Plutarch

46.

Music causes us to think eloquently.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

47.

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

Schnabel, Artur

48.

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

Ed Gardner

49.

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

50.

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

George Santayana