Motivational Quotes

Music

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

- Schnabel, Artur

Best Quotes about Music

Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune.

Kin Hubbard

I hate music, especially when it's played.

Jimmy Durante

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

Music like religion, unconditionally brings in its train all the moral virtues to the heart it enters, even though that heart is not in the least worthy.

Jean Baptiste Montegut

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

Davis, Miles

Music should never be harmless.

Robertson, Robbie

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

Rattle, Simon

If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.

John Cage

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

10.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

Aldous Huxley

11.

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

12.

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

Szell, George

13.

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)

14.

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

15.

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

William Shakespeare

16.

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

Dietz, Howard

17.

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

18.

I think everyone should have a Beatles phase in their life. I think it's part of growing up in the Western world.

Jadelr and Cristina Cordova

19.

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

20.

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.

21.

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

George Eliot

22.

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

William Shakespeare

23.

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.

George Eliot

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.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

26.

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

Gore, Tipper

27.

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

28.

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

Brown, James

29.

We all drew on the comfort which is given out by the major works of Mozart, which is as real and material as the warmth given up by a glass of brandy.

West, Rebecca

30.

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

Sousa, John Philip

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

I was a veteran before I was a teenager.

Jackson, Michael

35.

Music is essentially useless, as life is: but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.

George Santayana

36.

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

George Bernard Shaw

37.

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

Zappa, Frank

38.

Music is spiritual. The music business is not.

Morrison, Van

39.

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

40.

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

Wordsworth, William

41.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

42.

After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

Huxley, Aldous

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

48.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

49.

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

J. K. Rowling

50.

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.