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

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.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Johnson, Samuel

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

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

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

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.

Whiteman, Paul

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

Coward, Noel

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

I was a veteran before I was a teenager.

Jackson, Michael

10.

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

11.

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

Tate, Jeffrey

12.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

13.

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

14.

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

Cocteau, Jean

15.

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

16.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Conroy, Pat

17.

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

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.

[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

20.

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

Brown, James

21.

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

Lutoslawski, Witold

22.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

23.

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

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.

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

26.

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

Aldous Huxley

27.

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

28.

I've always felt rock and roll was very, very wholesome music.

Franklin, Aretha

29.

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

Beerbohm, Sir Max

30.

Canned music is like audible wallpaper.

Cooke, Alistair

31.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky

32.

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

33.

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

Winter, Arthur

34.

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

William Shakespeare

35.

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

Szell, George

36.

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

37.

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

Huneker, James G.

38.

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

Wilde, Oscar

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.

Music expresses that which can not be said and on which it is impossible to be silent

Hugo, Victor

41.

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

Addison, Joseph

42.

They said, You have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are. The man replied, Things as they are changed upon a blue guitar.

Stevens, Wallace

43.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw

44.

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

Davis, Miles

45.

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

46.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

50.

Music is the vernacular of the human soul.

Latham, Geoffrey