Motivational Quotes

Music

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

Best Quotes about Music

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

Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.

Sousa, John Philip

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

Auden, W. H.

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

Pepys, Samuel

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.

Oscar Wilde

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

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

Aldous Huxley

10.

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

Lynn, Loretta

11.

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

12.

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

13.

Music, moody food of us that trade in love.

William Shakespeare

14.

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

15.

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

Billings, Josh

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

I wish Frank Sinatra would just shut up and sing.

Bacall, Lauren

20.

Music is the vernacular of the human soul.

Latham, Geoffrey

21.

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

22.

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

G. K. Chesterton

23.

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

24.

Music causes us to think eloquently.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

25.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

26.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

27.

It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness and of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature, and everlasting beauty of monotony.

Britten, Benjamin

28.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

29.

Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay buried in the memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh. A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me.

Genet, Jean

30.

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

John Erskine

31.

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

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.

[T]here's no bad day that can't be overcome by listening to a barbershop quartet; this is just truth, plain and simple.

Chuck Sigars

34.

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

Brown, James

35.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw

36.

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

Gibbons, Billy

37.

Rock 'n Roll is an asylum for emotional idiots.

Neville, Richard

38.

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.

39.

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

40.

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

Martin Luther

41.

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

Cocteau, Jean

42.

Music should never be harmless.

Robertson, Robbie

43.

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

Dietz, Howard

44.

I can't listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.

Woody Allen

45.

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

46.

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

Kin Hubbard

47.

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

48.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Johnson, Samuel

49.

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