Motivational Quotes

Music

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

Best Quotes about Music

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

Edgar Wilson Nye

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

Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.

Carlyle, Thomas

There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.

Beecham, Sir Thomas

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw

I think no woman I have had ever gave me so sweet a moment, or at so light a price, as the moment I owe to a newly heard musical phrase.

Stendhal, Henri B.

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

Plutarch

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John

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

Schnabel, Artur

10.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

11.

Music is spiritual. The music business is not.

Morrison, Van

12.

Sounds like the blues are composed of feeling, finesse, and fear.

Gibbons, Billy

13.

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

Plato

14.

Without Elvis, none of us could have made it.

Holly, Buddy

15.

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

Hugo, Victor

16.

Today, music heralds... the establishment of a society of repetition in which nothing will happen anymore.

Attali, Jacques

17.

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

Kin Hubbard

18.

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

19.

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

Szell, George

20.

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

21.

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

Wordsworth, William

22.

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

23.

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

Huxley, Aldous

24.

Rock 'n Roll is monotony tinged with hysteria.

Packard, Vance

25.

I like Beethoven, especially the poems.

Starr, Ringo

26.

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

27.

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.

28.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

29.

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

Aldous Huxley

30.

You are the music while the music lasts.

Eliot, T. S.

31.

Music is only love looking for words.

Durrell, Lawrence

32.

Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.

Wilde, Oscar

33.

The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes.

Beecham, Sir Thomas

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Lynn, Loretta

37.

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

Robert Fripp

38.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

39.

I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand.

Sir Edward Appleton

40.

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

41.

A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.

Green, Benny

42.

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

43.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky

44.

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

Woody Allen

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Johnson, Samuel

49.

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

50.

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