Motivational Quotes

Music

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

Best Quotes about Music

Rock 'n Roll is an asylum for emotional idiots.

Neville, Richard

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

Carlyle, Thomas

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

Dan Rather

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

Dietz, Howard

We are aware that the conductor is not really making the music, it is making him -- if he is relaxed, open and attuned, then the invisible will take possession of him; through him, it will reach us.

Brook, Peter (Stephen Paul)

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

Davis, Miles

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

Sousa, John Philip

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

Brown, James

I have no pleasure in any man who despises music. It is no invention of ours: it is a gift of God. I place it next to theology. Satan hates music: he knows how it drives the evil spirit out of us.

Luther, Martin

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.

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

Auden, W. H.

12.

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

Pierre Beaumarchais

13.

I've outdone anyone you can name -- Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500.

Brown, James

14.

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

Robert Fripp

15.

Without Elvis, none of us could have made it.

Holly, Buddy

16.

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

Kin Hubbard

17.

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

18.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky

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.

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

Aldous Huxley

21.

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

22.

Music, moody food of us that trade in love.

William Shakespeare

23.

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

Green, Benny

24.

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

William Shakespeare

25.

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

26.

Music causes us to think eloquently.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

27.

Canned music is like audible wallpaper.

Cooke, Alistair

28.

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

29.

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

Martin Luther

30.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

31.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

32.

Medicine to produce health must examine disease; and music, to create harmony must investigate discord.

Plutarch

33.

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

34.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

35.

Music and woman I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is.

Pepys, Samuel

36.

Ah, music. A magic beyond all we do here!

J. K. Rowling

37.

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

Oscar Wilde

38.

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

Ruskin, John

39.

There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.

George Eliot

40.

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

41.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

42.

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

Schnabel, Artur

43.

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

Johnson, Samuel

44.

It's a marvelous feeling when someone says I want to do this song of yours because they've connected to it. That's what I'm after.

Carpenter, Mary Chapin

45.

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

46.

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

Grant, Ulysses S.

47.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John

48.

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

49.

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

50.

Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.

Mascagni, Pietro