Motivational Quotes

Music

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

Best Quotes about Music

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Stravinsky, Igor

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

Schnabel, Artur

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

Lennon, John

Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes.

Cosby, Bill

Without music, life would be an error. The German imagines even God singing songs

Nietzsche, Friedrich

I've always felt rock and roll was very, very wholesome music.

Franklin, Aretha

Music was invented to confirm human loneliness.

Durrell, Lawrence

I like Beethoven, especially the poems.

Starr, Ringo

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

10.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

11.

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

12.

Music is the key to the female heart.

Seume, Johann G.

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Music causes us to think eloquently.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

16.

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

17.

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

18.

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

Coward, Noel

19.

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

Davis, Miles

20.

[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

21.

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

Plato

22.

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)

23.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Johnson, Samuel

24.

Good music is very close to primitive language.

Diderot, Denis

25.

One is hardly sensible of fatigue while he marches to music.

Carlyle, Thomas

26.

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

27.

I wish Frank Sinatra would just shut up and sing.

Bacall, Lauren

28.

Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be absolutely deaf.

Wilde, Oscar

29.

They said, You have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are. The man replied, Things as they are changed upon a blue guitar.

Stevens, Wallace

30.

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

Auden, W. H.

31.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

32.

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

33.

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

Billings, Josh

34.

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

Robert Fripp

35.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Conroy, Pat

36.

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

37.

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

Miller, Henry

38.

Rock 'n Roll is an asylum for emotional idiots.

Neville, Richard

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Gore, Tipper

43.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

44.

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

Wilde, Oscar

45.

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

Huneker, James G.

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw

50.

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

Huxley, Aldous