Motivational Quotes

Music

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

Best Quotes about Music

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

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

Miller, Henry

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

Music and dancing (the more the pity) have become so closely associated with ideas of riot and debauchery among the less cultivated classes, that a taste for them, for their own sakes, can hardly be said to exist, and before they can be recommended as innocent or safe amusements, a very great change of ideas must take place.

Herschel, Sir John

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

Szell, George

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

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

To know the cause why music was ordain'd! Was it not to refresh the mind of a man after his studies or his usual pain?

William Shakespeare

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

Addison, Joseph

10.

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

Lynn, Loretta

11.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

12.

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

Wilde, Oscar

13.

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

14.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

15.

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

George Santayana

16.

Music should never be harmless.

Robertson, Robbie

17.

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

18.

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

Coward, Noel

19.

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

Dietz, Howard

20.

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

Dan Rather

21.

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

22.

Music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good or bad to the deaf.

Spinoza, Baruch (Benedict de)

23.

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

24.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Conroy, Pat

25.

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.

26.

Music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.

Duffecy, James

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

Woody Allen

29.

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)

30.

Mozart is sweet sunshine.

Dvorak, Antonin

31.

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

Auden, W. H.

32.

I was a veteran before I was a teenager.

Jackson, Michael

33.

The history of a people is found in its songs.

Jellinek, George

34.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Johnson, Samuel

35.

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

36.

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

Tate, Jeffrey

37.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

38.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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.

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

41.

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

42.

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

William Shakespeare

43.

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.

44.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Stravinsky, Igor

45.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John

46.

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

47.

A good composer is slowly discovered a bad composer is slowly found out.

Newman, Ernest

48.

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

Davis, Miles

49.

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.

50.

I hate music, especially when it's played.