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

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

Music is the vernacular of the human soul.

Latham, Geoffrey

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

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

Schnabel, Artur

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

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

Mencken, H. L.

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

Martin Luther

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

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

13.

Give me a laundry list and I'll set it to music.

Rossini, Gioacchino Antonio

14.

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

Woody Allen

15.

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

16.

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

17.

You are the music while the music lasts.

Eliot, T. S.

18.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John

19.

Music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.

Duffecy, James

20.

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

Gore, Tipper

21.

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

Coward, Noel

22.

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

Oscar Wilde

23.

I resent performing for frisking idiots who don't know anything.

Lennon, John

24.

You don't need any brains to listen to music.

Pavarotti, Luciano

25.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

26.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Conroy, Pat

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Dietz, Howard

30.

Canned music is like audible wallpaper.

Cooke, Alistair

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.

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

William Shakespeare

33.

The history of a people is found in its songs.

Jellinek, George

34.

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

35.

Music, moody food of us that trade in love.

William Shakespeare

36.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

37.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Stravinsky, Igor

38.

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

Rattle, Simon

39.

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

William Shakespeare

40.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky

41.

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

Green, Benny

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.

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

Ruskin, John

44.

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

Franklin, Aretha

45.

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

46.

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

Sousa, John Philip

47.

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

48.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

49.

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

Luther, Martin

50.

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