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

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

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

Lynn, Loretta

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

Wilson, Colin

Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.

Mascagni, Pietro

Rock 'n Roll is an asylum for emotional idiots.

Neville, Richard

Country music is three chords and the truth.

Howard, Harlan

Song is the heroics of speech.

Carlyle, Thomas

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

12.

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

Martin Luther

13.

Rock 'n Roll is monotony tinged with hysteria.

Packard, Vance

14.

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

15.

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

Pepys, Samuel

16.

Music was invented to confirm human loneliness.

Durrell, Lawrence

17.

Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay buried in the memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh. A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me.

Genet, Jean

18.

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)

19.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Stravinsky, Igor

20.

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

21.

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

William Shakespeare

22.

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

23.

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

Zappa, Frank

24.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

25.

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

26.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

27.

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

Lennon, John

28.

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

Proverb, Zimbabwe

29.

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

Plutarch

30.

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

Ed Gardner

31.

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

32.

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

33.

[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

34.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

35.

True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today.

Gershwin, George

36.

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

37.

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

Huxley, Aldous

38.

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

39.

If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.

Carlyle, Thomas

40.

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

Spinoza, Baruch (Benedict de)

41.

Music, moody food of us that trade in love.

William Shakespeare

42.

The high note is not the only thing.

Domingo, Placido

43.

I hate music, especially when it's played.

Jimmy Durante

44.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

45.

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.

46.

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

Billings, Josh

47.

Music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.

Duffecy, James

48.

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

49.

Levi-Strauss, Claude

50.

Just as certain selections of music will nourish your physical body and your emotional layer, so other musical works will bring greater health to your mind.

Lingerman, Hal A.