Motivational Quotes

Music

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

- George Eliot

Best Quotes about Music

Music and dancing (the more the pity) have become so closely associated with ideas of riot and debauchery among the less cultivated classes, that a taste for them, for their own sakes, can hardly be said to exist, and before they can be recommended as innocent or safe amusements, a very great change of ideas must take place.

Herschel, Sir John

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

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.

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

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

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

Pepys, Samuel

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

The effects of good music are not just because it's new; on the contrary music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

There is something suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is, by her nature, equivocal. I shall not be going too far in saying at once that she is politically suspect.

Mann, Thomas

10.

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

Martin Luther

11.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw

12.

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

Lutoslawski, Witold

13.

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

Plutarch

14.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

15.

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

G. K. Chesterton

16.

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

17.

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

George Santayana

18.

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

Woody Allen

19.

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

20.

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

Ruskin, John

21.

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

Wilson, Colin

22.

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

Davis, Miles

23.

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

24.

I think no woman I have had ever gave me so sweet a moment, or at so light a price, as the moment I owe to a newly heard musical phrase.

Stendhal, Henri B.

25.

Music is only love looking for words.

Durrell, Lawrence

26.

Country music is three chords and the truth.

Howard, Harlan

27.

Music should never be harmless.

Robertson, Robbie

28.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Stravinsky, Igor

29.

I would advise you to keep your overhead down; avoid a major drug habit; play everyday, and take it in front of other people. They need to hear it, and you need them to hear it.

Taylor, James

30.

Music causes us to think eloquently.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

31.

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

32.

You don't need any brains to listen to music.

Pavarotti, Luciano

33.

Music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.

Duffecy, James

34.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

35.

I like Beethoven, especially the poems.

Starr, Ringo

36.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

37.

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

38.

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

John Erskine

39.

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

Auden, W. H.

40.

Music was invented to confirm human loneliness.

Durrell, Lawrence

41.

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

Oscar Wilde

42.

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

William Shakespeare

43.

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

George Bernard Shaw

44.

Song is the heroics of speech.

Carlyle, Thomas

45.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

46.

I was a veteran before I was a teenager.

Jackson, Michael

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.

If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die. That strain again! it had a dying fall: O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour!

William Shakespeare

49.

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

Lynn, Loretta

50.

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

Ed Gardner