Motivational Quotes

Music

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

- Auden, W. H.

Best Quotes about Music

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

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

Ruskin, John

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

William Shakespeare

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

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

Dietz, Howard

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John

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

The history of a people is found in its songs.

Jellinek, George

Without music, life would be an error. The German imagines even God singing songs

Nietzsche, Friedrich

10.

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

11.

Music, moody food of us that trade in love.

William Shakespeare

12.

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

13.

I wish Frank Sinatra would just shut up and sing.

Bacall, Lauren

14.

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

Wilson, Colin

15.

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

16.

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

Dan Rather

17.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

18.

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

Szell, George

19.

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

Wordsworth, William

20.

I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It's something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music.

Joel, Billy

21.

A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.

Giles, Henry

22.

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

23.

They said, You have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are. The man replied, Things as they are changed upon a blue guitar.

Stevens, Wallace

24.

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

25.

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

Gore, Tipper

26.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

27.

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.

28.

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

Auden, W. H.

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.

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

31.

Music is only love looking for words.

Durrell, Lawrence

32.

Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.

Miller, Henry

33.

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

34.

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

Aldous Huxley

35.

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

36.

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.

Plato

37.

Canned music is like audible wallpaper.

Cooke, Alistair

38.

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

Pierre Beaumarchais

39.

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

40.

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

Armstrong, Louis

41.

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

Winter, Arthur

42.

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

43.

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

44.

Rock 'n Roll is monotony tinged with hysteria.

Packard, Vance

45.

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

46.

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

47.

The high note is not the only thing.

Domingo, Placido

48.

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

Edgar Wilson Nye

49.

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