Motivational Quotes

Music

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

- Beerbohm, Sir Max

Best Quotes about Music

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

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

Dietz, Howard

A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.

Giles, Henry

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

I was a veteran before I was a teenager.

Jackson, Michael

Music is essentially useless, as life is: but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.

George Santayana

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

I think everyone should have a Beatles phase in their life. I think it's part of growing up in the Western world.

Jadelr and Cristina Cordova

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

Robert Fripp

10.

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

11.

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

Wilson, Colin

12.

It was called the Backstreet Market, and it was just like a local hangout. That was where the kids would drive their cars, hang out with their convertibles and listen to music. That's how we got Backstreet. We put Boys on it, because no matter how old we get, we'll always be boys.

Richardson, Kevin

13.

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

G. K. Chesterton

14.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

15.

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

Lennon, John

16.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Johnson, Samuel

17.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw

18.

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

Oscar Wilde

19.

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

Woody Allen

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.

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

22.

I like Beethoven, especially the poems.

Starr, Ringo

23.

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

William Shakespeare

24.

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

25.

Music should never be harmless.

Robertson, Robbie

26.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John

27.

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

28.

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

Miller, Henry

29.

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

Gore, Tipper

30.

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

Proverb, Zimbabwe

31.

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

Lutoslawski, Witold

32.

Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.

George Bernard Shaw

33.

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

34.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

35.

Music is only love looking for words.

Durrell, Lawrence

36.

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

Edgar Wilson Nye

37.

I know only two tunes. One them is Yankee Doodle and the other isn't.

Grant, Ulysses S.

38.

Good music is very close to primitive language.

Diderot, Denis

39.

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

40.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

41.

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.

42.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears form the eyes of woman.

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

I think my fans will follow me into our combined old age. Real musicians and real fans stay together for a long, long time.

Raitt, Bonnie

47.

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

48.

The new sound-sphere is global. It ripples at great speed across languages, ideologies, frontiers and races. The economics of this musical Esperanto is staggering. Rock and pop breed concentric worlds of fashion, setting and life-style. Popular music has brought with it sociologies of private and public manner, of group solidarity. The politics of Eden come loud.

Steiner, George

49.

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

Aldous Huxley

50.

You are the music while the music lasts.

Eliot, T. S.