Motivational Quotes

Music

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

Best Quotes about Music

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

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

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

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

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

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

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

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

Cocteau, Jean

Country music is three chords and the truth.

Howard, Harlan

10.

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

Hugo, Victor

11.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

12.

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

Brown, James

13.

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)

14.

Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune.

Kin Hubbard

15.

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

Winter, Arthur

16.

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

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.

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

Beerbohm, Sir Max

19.

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

Zappa, Frank

20.

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

Pepys, Samuel

21.

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

Brown, James

22.

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

Wilson, Colin

23.

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

24.

There is two kinds of music the good and bad. I play the good kind.

Armstrong, Louis

25.

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

William Shakespeare

26.

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.

Whiteman, Paul

27.

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

Plutarch

28.

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

Robert Fripp

29.

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

John Erskine

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

William Shakespeare

34.

If we were all determined to play the first violin we should never have an ensemble. Therefore, respect every musician in his proper place.

Schumann, Robert

35.

Rock 'n Roll is an asylum for emotional idiots.

Neville, Richard

36.

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

37.

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

Huneker, James G.

38.

Music and dancing (the more the pity) have become so closely associated with ideas of riot and debauchery among the less cultivated classes, that a taste for them, for their own sakes, can hardly be said to exist, and before they can be recommended as innocent or safe amusements, a very great change of ideas must take place.

Herschel, Sir John

39.

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

Martin Luther

40.

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

Luther, Martin

41.

Music, moody food of us that trade in love.

William Shakespeare

42.

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.

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 the shorthand of emotion.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

45.

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

Schnabel, Artur

46.

Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.

George Bernard Shaw

47.

Sounds like the blues are composed of feeling, finesse, and fear.