Motivational Quotes

Music

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

- Sir Thomas Beecham

Best Quotes about Music

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

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

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

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

George Eliot

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

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

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

Auden, W. H.

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking,'Is there a meaning to music?'My answer would be,'Yes.'And'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?'My answer to that would be,'No.'

Aaron Copland

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

William Shakespeare

10.

Music was invented to confirm human loneliness.

Durrell, Lawrence

11.

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

12.

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

Kin Hubbard

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.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

15.

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

16.

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

Billings, Josh

17.

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

Pavarotti, Luciano

18.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Stravinsky, Igor

19.

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

20.

Canned music is like audible wallpaper.

Cooke, Alistair

21.

It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives it most distinctive characteristics.

Johnson, James Weldon

22.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

23.

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

24.

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

25.

Music is the fourth great material want, first food, then clothes, then shelter, then music.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

26.

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

27.

[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

28.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky

29.

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

Johnson, Samuel

30.

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

Miller, Henry

31.

Music is the key to the female heart.

Seume, Johann G.

32.

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

33.

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

Schnabel, Artur

34.

Music is spiritual. The music business is not.

Morrison, Van

35.

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.

Plato

36.

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

Dietz, Howard

37.

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

38.

I like Beethoven, especially the poems.

Starr, Ringo

39.

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

40.

I've outdone anyone you can name -- Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500.

Brown, James

41.

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

Tate, Jeffrey

42.

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

Franklin, Aretha

43.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Conroy, Pat

44.

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

Plutarch

45.

I was a veteran before I was a teenager.

Jackson, Michael

46.

Rock 'n Roll is monotony tinged with hysteria.

Packard, Vance

47.

I know only two tunes. One them is Yankee Doodle and the other isn't.

Grant, Ulysses S.

48.

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

Gore, Tipper

49.

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

50.

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

Zappa, Frank