Motivational Quotes

Music

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

Best Quotes about Music

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

Dietz, Howard

Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.

Mascagni, Pietro

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw

Alas! all music jars when the soul's out of tune.

Cervantes, Miguel De

We fight our way through the massed and leveled collective safe taste of the Top 40, just looking for a little something we can call our own. But when we find it and jam the radio to hear it again it isn't just ours -- it is a link to thousands of others who are sharing it with us. As a matter of a single song this might mean very little; as culture, as a way of life, you can't beat it.

Marcus, Greil

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

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

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

She was one of those people who said I don't know anything about music, but I know what I like.

Beerbohm, Sir Max

10.

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

Pierre Beaumarchais

11.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

12.

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

Lutoslawski, Witold

13.

Music of all the arts has the most influence on the passions and the legislator should give it the greatest encouragement.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

14.

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

Huneker, James G.

15.

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

16.

Country music is three chords and the truth.

Howard, Harlan

17.

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

18.

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

John Erskine

19.

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

20.

Music like religion, unconditionally brings in its train all the moral virtues to the heart it enters, even though that heart is not in the least worthy.

Jean Baptiste Montegut

21.

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

22.

Music is the key to the female heart.

Seume, Johann G.

23.

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

Grant, Ulysses S.

24.

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

25.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Stravinsky, Igor

26.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

27.

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

Green, Benny

28.

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

Aldous Huxley

29.

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

Lynn, Loretta

30.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Conroy, Pat

31.

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

G. K. Chesterton

32.

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

Miller, Henry

33.

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.

34.

Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra, not choreography to the audience.

Szell, George

35.

The author's conviction on this day of New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music; but this must not be taken as implying that all good music is dance music or all poetry lyric. Bach and Mozart are never too far from physical movement.

Pound, Ezra

36.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

37.

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

38.

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

Martin Luther

39.

Hearing often-times the still, sad music of humanity, nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power to chasten and subdue.

Wordsworth, William

40.

The high note is not the only thing.

Domingo, Placido

41.

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

42.

You are the music while the music lasts.

Eliot, T. S.

43.

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

Lennon, John

44.

Song is the heroics of speech.

Carlyle, Thomas

45.

It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness and of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature, and everlasting beauty of monotony.

Britten, Benjamin

46.

Like everything else in nature, music is a becoming, and it becomes its full self, when its sounds and laws are used by intelligent man for the production of harmony, and so made the vehicle of emotion and thought.

Mungers, Theodore

47.

Music expresses that which can not be said and on which it is impossible to be silent

Hugo, Victor

48.

Good music is very close to primitive language.

Diderot, Denis

49.

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

50.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell