Motivational Quotes

Music

I like Beethoven, especially the poems.

- Starr, Ringo

Best Quotes about Music

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music; they should be taught to love it instead.

Stravinsky, Igor

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

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

Lennon, John

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

Billings, Josh

Music causes us to think eloquently.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Music, moody food of us that trade in love.

William Shakespeare

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

Schnabel, Artur

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw

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

10.

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

Green, Benny

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

The most perfect expression of human behavior is a string quartet.

Tate, Jeffrey

15.

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

Pepys, Samuel

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Johnson, Samuel

19.

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.

Auden, W. H.

20.

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

Ed Gardner

21.

You are the music while the music lasts.

Eliot, T. S.

22.

Mozart is sweet sunshine.

Dvorak, Antonin

23.

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)

24.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Stravinsky, Igor

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Music is only love looking for words.

Durrell, Lawrence

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Lynn, Loretta

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

Edgar Wilson Nye

36.

Song is the heroics of speech.

Carlyle, Thomas

37.

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

Huxley, Aldous

38.

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

39.

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

J. K. Rowling

40.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

41.

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

42.

I think my fans will follow me into our combined old age. Real musicians and real fans stay together for a long, long time.

Raitt, Bonnie

43.

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

Attali, Jacques

44.

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.

Plato

45.

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

46.

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

47.

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.

48.

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

Brown, James

49.

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.

Whiteman, Paul

50.

The history of a people is found in its songs.