Motivational Quotes

Music

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

Best Quotes about Music

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

Aldous Huxley

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

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

Mozart is sweet sunshine.

Dvorak, Antonin

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

Rossini, Gioacchino Antonio

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

Pepys, Samuel

Rock 'n Roll is monotony tinged with hysteria.

Packard, Vance

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

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

Thoreau, Henry David

10.

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

Johnson, Samuel

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.

Music should never be harmless.

Robertson, Robbie

13.

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

George Santayana

14.

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

15.

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

16.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.

Carlyle, Thomas

17.

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

18.

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

Lennon, John

19.

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

20.

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.

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

George Eliot

24.

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

Wilde, Oscar

25.

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

Wilson, Colin

26.

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

27.

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

Lutoslawski, Witold

28.

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

Proverb, Zimbabwe

29.

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

Sousa, John Philip

30.

Music hath the charm to soothe a savage beast, but I'd try a revolver first.

Billings, Josh

31.

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

32.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

33.

The high note is not the only thing.

Domingo, Placido

34.

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

Gore, Tipper

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

I wish Frank Sinatra would just shut up and sing.

Bacall, Lauren

39.

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

40.

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

41.

Canned music is like audible wallpaper.

Cooke, Alistair

42.

Music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good or bad to the deaf.

Spinoza, Baruch (Benedict de)

43.

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

Lynn, Loretta

44.

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

45.

Today, music heralds... the establishment of a society of repetition in which nothing will happen anymore.

Attali, Jacques

46.

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

G. K. Chesterton

47.

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

Huneker, James G.

48.

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

49.

Music is the key to the female heart.

Seume, Johann G.

50.

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