Motivational Quotes

Music

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

Best Quotes about Music

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.

George Bernard Shaw

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Grant, Ulysses S.

The history of a people is found in its songs.

Jellinek, George

10.

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

11.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

12.

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

Rossini, Gioacchino Antonio

13.

Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.

Mascagni, Pietro

14.

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

Addison, Joseph

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.

Music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.

Duffecy, James

17.

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

Wilson, Colin

18.

Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be absolutely deaf.

Wilde, Oscar

19.

Music causes us to think eloquently.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

20.

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

Brown, James

21.

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

Ruskin, John

22.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky

23.

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

Wilde, Oscar

24.

Next to theology I give music the highest place of honor.

Luther, Martin

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Winter, Arthur

28.

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

Lynn, Loretta

29.

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

30.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

31.

If anyone has conducted a Beethoven performance, and then doesn't have to go to an osteopath, then there's something wrong.

Rattle, Simon

32.

It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites --opposite bents, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where there is no polarity --where energies flow smoothly in one direction --there will be much doing but no music.

Hoffer, Eric

33.

All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.

Cocteau, Jean

34.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John

35.

I'm not going to be joining ZZ Top. You know they can't play my stuff. It's too complicated.

Brown, James

36.

Canned music is like audible wallpaper.

Cooke, Alistair

37.

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

38.

Music is only love looking for words.

Durrell, Lawrence

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Sousa, John Philip

44.

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.

45.

I hate music, especially when it's played.

Jimmy Durante

46.

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.

Auden, W. H.

47.

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

48.

There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.