Motivational Quotes

Music

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

- Thoreau, Henry David

Best Quotes about Music

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

Green, Benny

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

Pepys, Samuel

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

Wordsworth, William

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

Music like religion, unconditionally brings in its train all the moral virtues to the heart it enters, even though that heart is not in the least worthy.

Jean Baptiste Montegut

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

Rock 'n Roll is an asylum for emotional idiots.

Neville, Richard

Brass bands are all very well in their place - outdoors and several miles away.

Sir Thomas Beecham

The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. The motions of his spirit are dull as night, and his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted.

Shakespeare, William

10.

Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.

Mascagni, Pietro

11.

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

12.

Canned music is like audible wallpaper.

Cooke, Alistair

13.

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

G. K. Chesterton

14.

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

J. K. Rowling

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.

I am fond of music I think because it is so amoral. Everything else is moral and I am after something that isn't. I have always found moralizing intolerable.

Hesse, Hermann

17.

If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die. That strain again! it had a dying fall: O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour!

William Shakespeare

18.

Music of all the arts has the most influence on the passions and the legislator should give it the greatest encouragement.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

19.

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

Brown, James

20.

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

Tate, Jeffrey

21.

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

Hugo, Victor

22.

Music is only love looking for words.

Durrell, Lawrence

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.

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

Kin Hubbard

25.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John

26.

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

Ed Gardner

27.

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

28.

Music, moody food of us that trade in love.

William Shakespeare

29.

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

Luther, Martin

30.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Johnson, Samuel

31.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky

32.

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

33.

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

Wilson, Colin

34.

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

35.

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

36.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Conroy, Pat

37.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw

38.

But then there's a moment like tonight, a profound and transcendent experience, the feeling as if a door has opened, and it's all because of that instrument, that incredible, magical instrument.

Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

39.

Music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.

Duffecy, James

40.

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

41.

Music is the key to the female heart.

Seume, Johann G.

42.

Music is the vernacular of the human soul.

Latham, Geoffrey

43.

Rock 'n Roll is monotony tinged with hysteria.

Packard, Vance

44.

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

45.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

46.

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

Dan Rather

47.

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

Huxley, Aldous

48.

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

49.

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.

50.

I wish Frank Sinatra would just shut up and sing.

Bacall, Lauren