Motivational Quotes

Music

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

Best Quotes about Music

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

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

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.

George Eliot

Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra, not choreography to the audience.

Szell, George

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John

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

Pierre Beaumarchais

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.

Whiteman, Paul

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

10.

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

11.

[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

12.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Stravinsky, Igor

13.

Since music is a language with some meaning at least for the immense majority of mankind, although only a tiny minority of people are capable of formulating a meaning in it, and since it is the only language with the contradictory attributes of being at once intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of man, a mystery that all the various disciplines come up against and which holds the key to their progress.

Levi-Strauss, Claude

14.

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

Brown, James

15.

If you can walk you can dance. If you can talk you can sing.

Proverb, Zimbabwe

16.

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

Winter, Arthur

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.

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

Green, Benny

19.

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

20.

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

21.

If anyone has conducted a Beethoven performance, and then doesn't have to go to an osteopath, then there's something wrong.

Rattle, Simon

22.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

Camus, Albert

23.

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

J. K. Rowling

24.

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

25.

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

Aldous Huxley

26.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky

27.

If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation.

Wilde, Oscar

28.

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

Schnabel, Artur

29.

Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

30.

Alas! all music jars when the soul's out of tune.

Cervantes, Miguel De

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Johnson, Samuel

35.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw

36.

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

Beerbohm, Sir Max

37.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

38.

Music is the key to the female heart.

Seume, Johann G.

39.

I was a veteran before I was a teenager.

Jackson, Michael

40.

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking,'Is there a meaning to music?'My answer would be,'Yes.'And'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?'My answer to that would be,'No.'

Aaron Copland

41.

People whose sensibility is destroyed by music in trains, airports, lifts, cannot concentrate on a Beethoven Quartet.

Lutoslawski, Witold

42.

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

G. K. Chesterton

43.

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

Ed Gardner

44.

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