Motivational Quotes

Music

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

- Mencken, H. L.

Best Quotes about Music

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

Huxley, Aldous

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

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

Wilde, Oscar

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

Carlyle, Thomas

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

Wilson, Colin

Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory.

Beecham, Sir Thomas

Music causes us to think eloquently.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

We all drew on the comfort which is given out by the major works of Mozart, which is as real and material as the warmth given up by a glass of brandy.

West, Rebecca

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Huneker, James G.

13.

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

Plato

14.

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

15.

Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible.

Johnson, Samuel

16.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

17.

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

18.

I like Beethoven, especially the poems.

Starr, Ringo

19.

[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

20.

A good composer is slowly discovered a bad composer is slowly found out.

Newman, Ernest

21.

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

Dietz, Howard

22.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Conroy, Pat

23.

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

Robert Fripp

24.

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

Pepys, Samuel

25.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Stravinsky, Igor

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Szell, George

29.

Since music is a language with some meaning at least for the immense majority of mankind, although only a tiny minority of people are capable of formulating a meaning in it, and since it is the only language with the contradictory attributes of being at once intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of man, a mystery that all the various disciplines come up against and which holds the key to their progress.

Levi-Strauss, Claude

30.

Music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.

Duffecy, James

31.

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

John Erskine

32.

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

Miller, Henry

33.

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

34.

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

Gibbons, Billy

35.

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

36.

A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.

Giles, Henry

37.

Music is spiritual. The music business is not.

Morrison, Van

38.

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

Martin Luther

39.

Music, moody food of us that trade in love.

William Shakespeare

40.

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

41.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John

42.

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

Wordsworth, William

43.

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.

Whiteman, Paul

44.

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

Plutarch

45.

Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.

Mascagni, Pietro

46.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

47.

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

Pavarotti, Luciano

48.

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

49.

Mozart is sweet sunshine.

Dvorak, Antonin

50.

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Tolstoy, Count Leo