Motivational Quotes

Music

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

- J. K. Rowling

Best Quotes about Music

Music, the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heaven we have below.

Addison, Joseph

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

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

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

Zappa, Frank

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

George Eliot

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

Davis, Miles

Sounds like the blues are composed of feeling, finesse, and fear.

Gibbons, Billy

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

Grant, Ulysses S.

Music is the key to the female heart.

Seume, Johann G.

10.

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

Lennon, John

11.

Music, moody food of us that trade in love.

William Shakespeare

12.

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

Mencken, H. L.

13.

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

Schnabel, Artur

14.

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

15.

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking,'Is there a meaning to music?'My answer would be,'Yes.'And'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?'My answer to that would be,'No.'

Aaron Copland

16.

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

Oscar Wilde

17.

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

Johnson, James Weldon

18.

I hate music, especially when it's played.

Jimmy Durante

19.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Wilde, Oscar

23.

It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites --opposite bents, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where there is no polarity --where energies flow smoothly in one direction --there will be much doing but no music.

Hoffer, Eric

24.

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

Attali, Jacques

25.

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

26.

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

Wilson, Colin

27.

There is two kinds of music the good and bad. I play the good kind.

Armstrong, Louis

28.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Johnson, Samuel

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.

Plato

33.

There once was a brainy baboon who always breathed down a bassoon for he said, It appears that in billions of years I shall certainly hit on a tune.

Pound, Ezra

34.

Music was invented to confirm human loneliness.

Durrell, Lawrence

35.

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

Martin Luther

36.

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

37.

Music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.

Duffecy, James

38.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

39.

Music is the vernacular of the human soul.

Latham, Geoffrey

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Auden, W. H.

44.

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

J. K. Rowling

45.

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

Edgar Wilson Nye

46.

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

Huneker, James G.

47.

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

48.

[T]here's no bad day that can't be overcome by listening to a barbershop quartet; this is just truth, plain and simple.

Chuck Sigars

49.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

50.

Music is spiritual. The music business is not.

Morrison, Van