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

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

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

There once was a brainy baboon who always breathed down a bassoon for he said, It appears that in billions of years I shall certainly hit on a tune.

Pound, Ezra

[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

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

Wilde, Oscar

Music is spiritual. The music business is not.

Morrison, Van

Music, the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heaven we have below.

Addison, Joseph

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

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

10.

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

11.

The manner in which Americans consume music has a lot to do with leaving it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles, like the score of a movie --it's consumed that way without any regard for how and why it's made.

Zappa, Frank

12.

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

Huneker, James G.

13.

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

Green, Benny

14.

Rock 'n Roll is an asylum for emotional idiots.

Neville, Richard

15.

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

16.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

17.

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

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.

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

20.

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

21.

Music is a readily available, highly effective tool that you use to improve both your cognitive and physical abilities.

Winter, Arthur

22.

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

Johnson, James Weldon

23.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Conroy, Pat

24.

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

Spinoza, Baruch (Benedict de)

25.

Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.

Ruskin, John

26.

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

Plutarch

27.

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.

28.

Music causes us to think eloquently.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

29.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

30.

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

31.

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

Coward, Noel

32.

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

Pavarotti, Luciano

33.

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

34.

I like Beethoven, especially the poems.

Starr, Ringo

35.

If we were all determined to play the first violin we should never have an ensemble. Therefore, respect every musician in his proper place.

Schumann, Robert

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

39.

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

Johnson, Samuel

40.

Words are poor interpreters in the realms of emotion. When all words end, music begins; when they suggest, it realizes; and hence is the secret of its strange, inexpressible power.

Haweis, H. R.

41.

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

42.

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

Edgar Wilson Nye

43.

The most perfect expression of human behavior is a string quartet.

Tate, Jeffrey

44.

Mozart is sweet sunshine.

Dvorak, Antonin

45.

Good music is very close to primitive language.