Motivational Quotes

Music

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

- Ruskin, John

Best Quotes about Music

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

Szell, George

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

Mencken, H. L.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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.

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

Music should never be harmless.

Robertson, Robbie

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

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

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

George Eliot

10.

Alas! all music jars when the soul's out of tune.

Cervantes, Miguel De

11.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Johnson, Samuel

12.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

13.

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.

14.

Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

15.

The history of a people is found in its songs.

Jellinek, George

16.

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

Wilde, Oscar

17.

Music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.

Duffecy, James

18.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

Camus, Albert

19.

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

20.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Stravinsky, Igor

21.

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

22.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.

Carlyle, Thomas

23.

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

Davis, Miles

24.

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

Sousa, John Philip

25.

You are the music while the music lasts.

Eliot, T. S.

26.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw

27.

I hate music, especially when it's played.

Jimmy Durante

28.

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

Zappa, Frank

29.

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

Gibbons, Billy

30.

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

Schnabel, Artur

31.

You're talking to someone who really understands rock music.

Gore, Tipper

32.

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

Woody Allen

33.

Music, moody food of us that trade in love.

William Shakespeare

34.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

35.

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

Lynn, Loretta

36.

The new sound-sphere is global. It ripples at great speed across languages, ideologies, frontiers and races. The economics of this musical Esperanto is staggering. Rock and pop breed concentric worlds of fashion, setting and life-style. Popular music has brought with it sociologies of private and public manner, of group solidarity. The politics of Eden come loud.

Steiner, George

37.

Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings.

Ed Gardner

38.

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.

39.

The high note is not the only thing.

Domingo, Placido

40.

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

Pavarotti, Luciano

41.

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)

42.

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

Pepys, Samuel

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Billings, Josh

46.

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

Brown, James

47.

Country music is three chords and the truth.

Howard, Harlan

48.

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

Plutarch

49.

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

50.

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