Motivational Quotes

Music

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

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.

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

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

Dietz, Howard

Music is the key to the female heart.

Seume, Johann G.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

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

Lutoslawski, Witold

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

The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.

Thoreau, Henry David

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

J. K. Rowling

10.

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.

Whiteman, Paul

11.

Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.

Mascagni, Pietro

12.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

13.

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

Mencken, H. L.

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Hugo, Victor

18.

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

Luther, Martin

19.

Music, moody food of us that trade in love.

William Shakespeare

20.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Conroy, Pat

21.

An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger.

Dan Rather

22.

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

George Santayana

23.

Rock 'n Roll is monotony tinged with hysteria.

Packard, Vance

24.

Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.

Miller, Henry

25.

A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.

Giles, Henry

26.

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

Ruskin, John

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Aldous Huxley

30.

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

Ed Gardner

31.

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

32.

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

Schnabel, Artur

33.

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

34.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Johnson, Samuel

35.

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

Rossini, Gioacchino Antonio

36.

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

Wilson, Colin

37.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

38.

It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of culture.

Cage, John

39.

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

40.

Music is only love looking for words.

Durrell, Lawrence

41.

Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. We listen to Bach transfixed because this is listening to a human mind.

Thomas, Lewis

42.

Music is the vernacular of the human soul.

Latham, Geoffrey

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

Coward, Noel

46.

Music should never be harmless.

Robertson, Robbie

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

50.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John