Motivational Quotes

Music

There once was a brainy baboon who always breathed down a bassoon for he said, It appears that in billions of years I shall certainly hit on a tune.

- Pound, Ezra

Best Quotes about Music

I've outdone anyone you can name -- Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500.

Brown, James

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

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

Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes.

Cosby, Bill

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

Mozart is sweet sunshine.

Dvorak, Antonin

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

The manner in which Americans consume music has a lot to do with leaving it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles, like the score of a movie --it's consumed that way without any regard for how and why it's made.

Zappa, Frank

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

Wordsworth, William

10.

Music was invented to confirm human loneliness.

Durrell, Lawrence

11.

All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.

Cocteau, Jean

12.

Rock 'n Roll is an asylum for emotional idiots.

Neville, Richard

13.

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

Pepys, Samuel

14.

Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.

Miller, Henry

15.

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

Schnabel, Artur

16.

Music is only love looking for words.

Durrell, Lawrence

17.

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

Pavarotti, Luciano

18.

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

19.

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

William Shakespeare

20.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

21.

I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand.

Sir Edward Appleton

22.

Rock 'n Roll is monotony tinged with hysteria.

Packard, Vance

23.

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

24.

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

Pierre Beaumarchais

25.

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

26.

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

Franklin, Aretha

27.

We fight our way through the massed and leveled collective safe taste of the Top 40, just looking for a little something we can call our own. But when we find it and jam the radio to hear it again it isn't just ours -- it is a link to thousands of others who are sharing it with us. As a matter of a single song this might mean very little; as culture, as a way of life, you can't beat it.

Marcus, Greil

28.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

29.

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

30.

Music, the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heaven we have below.

Addison, Joseph

31.

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

Hugo, Victor

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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.

36.

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

J. K. Rowling

37.

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

38.

I wish Frank Sinatra would just shut up and sing.

Bacall, Lauren

39.

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

40.

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

John Erskine

41.

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

42.

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

Dietz, Howard

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

Good music is very close to primitive language.

Diderot, Denis

47.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

48.

Song is the heroics of speech.