Motivational Quotes

Music

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

Best Quotes about Music

If music be the food of love, play on; give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die.

William Shakespeare

Music is a discipline, and a mistress of order and good manners, she makes the people milder and gentler, more moral and more reasonable.

Martin Luther

Music is only love looking for words.

Durrell, Lawrence

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

When griping grief the heart doth wound, and doleful dumps the mind opresses, then music, with her silver sound, with speedy help doth lend redress.

William Shakespeare

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

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

Proverb, Zimbabwe

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

Johnson, Samuel

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.

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

11.

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

12.

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

G. K. Chesterton

13.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

14.

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

Lutoslawski, Witold

15.

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

Hugo, Victor

16.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

17.

One is hardly sensible of fatigue while he marches to music.

Carlyle, Thomas

18.

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

Wordsworth, William

19.

Berlioz says nothing in his music, but he says it magnificently.

Huneker, James G.

20.

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

21.

Country music is three chords and the truth.

Howard, Harlan

22.

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

23.

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

24.

It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives it most distinctive characteristics.

Johnson, James Weldon

25.

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

Ed Gardner

26.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John

27.

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

Woody Allen

28.

A woman's two cents worth is worth two cents in the music business.

Lynn, Loretta

29.

I was a veteran before I was a teenager.

Jackson, Michael

30.

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

William Shakespeare

31.

Canned music is like audible wallpaper.

Cooke, Alistair

32.

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

33.

Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing.

John Erskine

34.

It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of culture.

Cage, John

35.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

36.

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

37.

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

Rossini, Gioacchino Antonio

38.

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

Wilde, Oscar

39.

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

40.

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.

41.

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

Huxley, Aldous

42.

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

43.

Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.

Mascagni, Pietro

44.

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.

45.

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

Kin Hubbard

46.

I like Beethoven, especially the poems.

Starr, Ringo

47.

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

Dietz, Howard

48.

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

49.

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

Mencken, H. L.

50.

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

Pierre Beaumarchais