Motivational Quotes

Music

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

- Rossini, Gioacchino Antonio

Best Quotes about Music

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

Billings, Josh

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

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

Music is the key to the female heart.

Seume, Johann G.

I think no woman I have had ever gave me so sweet a moment, or at so light a price, as the moment I owe to a newly heard musical phrase.

Stendhal, Henri B.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John

Good music is very close to primitive language.

Diderot, Denis

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

The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes --ah, that is where the art resides.

Schnabel, Artur

10.

[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

11.

The high note is not the only thing.

Domingo, Placido

12.

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

Szell, George

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Woody Allen

16.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky

17.

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

Lennon, John

18.

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

William Shakespeare

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Johnson, Samuel

22.

She was one of those people who said I don't know anything about music, but I know what I like.

Beerbohm, Sir Max

23.

Americans want grungy people, stabbing themselves in the head on stage. They get a bright bunch like us, with deodorant on, they don't get it.

Gallagher, Liam

24.

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

25.

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

Wordsworth, William

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

29.

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

Proverb, Zimbabwe

30.

Music should never be harmless.

Robertson, Robbie

31.

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

Huneker, James G.

32.

There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.

George Eliot

33.

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

34.

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

J. K. Rowling

35.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

36.

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

37.

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

William Shakespeare

38.

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

39.

The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. The motions of his spirit are dull as night, and his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted.

Shakespeare, William

40.

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

Auden, W. H.

41.

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

42.

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

Lutoslawski, Witold

43.

There is something suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is, by her nature, equivocal. I shall not be going too far in saying at once that she is politically suspect.

Mann, Thomas

44.

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

45.

Rock 'n Roll is monotony tinged with hysteria.

Packard, Vance

46.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

47.

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.

Beecham, Sir Thomas

48.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Johnson, Samuel

49.

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)

50.

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

Martin Luther