Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Music

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

Lutoslawski, Witold

Give me a laundry list and I'll set it to music.

Rossini, Gioacchino Antonio

I can sing, and speak to him in many sorts of music.

William Shakespeare

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

I can't listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.

Woody Allen

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw

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 history of a people is found in its songs.

Jellinek, George

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.

10.

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

Robert Fripp

11.

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

Johnson, James Weldon

12.

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

Lennon, John

13.

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

14.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

15.

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

16.

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

Plutarch

17.

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

Billings, Josh

18.

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

19.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

20.

Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.

Mascagni, Pietro

21.

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

J. K. Rowling

22.

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

Lynn, Loretta

23.

Music was invented to confirm human loneliness.

Durrell, Lawrence

24.

Music, moody food of us that trade in love.

William Shakespeare

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Wilson, Colin

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.

Good music is very close to primitive language.

Diderot, Denis

34.

Rock 'n Roll is an asylum for emotional idiots.

Neville, Richard

35.

Without Elvis, none of us could have made it.

Holly, Buddy

36.

Rock 'n Roll is monotony tinged with hysteria.

Packard, Vance

37.

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

Dietz, Howard

38.

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

Pavarotti, Luciano

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.

Sousa, John Philip

44.

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

45.

You are the music while the music lasts.

Eliot, T. S.

46.

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

Oscar Wilde

47.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

Plato

48.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

49.

I've outdone anyone you can name -- Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500.

Brown, James

50.

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

Miller, Henry