Motivational Quotes

Music

Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods; Since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage, But music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.

- William Shakespeare

Best Quotes about Music

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

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

Brown, James

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

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

Lutoslawski, Witold

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.

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

Szell, George

If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.

Carlyle, Thomas

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

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

10.

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

11.

Without Elvis, none of us could have made it.

Holly, Buddy

12.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw

13.

The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

Mencken, H. L.

14.

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

15.

A lot of people are singing about how screwed up the world is, and I don't think that everybody wants to hear about that all the time.

Carey, Mariah

16.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

17.

You are the music while the music lasts.

Eliot, T. S.

18.

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

19.

There is something suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is, by her nature, equivocal. I shall not be going too far in saying at once that she is politically suspect.

Mann, Thomas

20.

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

21.

You're talking to someone who really understands rock music.

Gore, Tipper

22.

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

Armstrong, Louis

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

We fight our way through the massed and leveled collective safe taste of the Top 40, just looking for a little something we can call our own. But when we find it and jam the radio to hear it again it isn't just ours -- it is a link to thousands of others who are sharing it with us. As a matter of a single song this might mean very little; as culture, as a way of life, you can't beat it.

Marcus, Greil

27.

Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be absolutely deaf.

Wilde, Oscar

28.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

29.

I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand.

Sir Edward Appleton

30.

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

31.

I would advise you to keep your overhead down; avoid a major drug habit; play everyday, and take it in front of other people. They need to hear it, and you need them to hear it.

Taylor, James

32.

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

Billings, Josh

33.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

34.

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

35.

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

Dietz, Howard

36.

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

37.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

38.

Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.

Ruskin, John

39.

Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes.

Cosby, Bill

40.

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

41.

Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.

Mascagni, Pietro

42.

I've always felt rock and roll was very, very wholesome music.

Franklin, Aretha

43.

Just as certain selections of music will nourish your physical body and your emotional layer, so other musical works will bring greater health to your mind.

Lingerman, Hal A.

44.

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

45.

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

William Shakespeare

46.

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

Tate, Jeffrey

47.

Music should never be harmless.