Motivational Quotes

Music

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

- Wilson, Colin

Best Quotes about Music

Rock 'n Roll is an asylum for emotional idiots.

Neville, Richard

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

Wilde, Oscar

The musical emotion springs precisely from the fact that at each moment the composer withholds or adds more or less than the listener anticipates on the basis of a pattern that he thinks he can guess, but that he is incapable of wholly divining. If the composer withholds more than we anticipate, we experience a delicious falling sensation; we feel we have been torn from a stable point on the musical ladder and thrust into the void. When the composer withholds less, the opposite occurs: he forces us to perform gymnastic exercises more skillful than our own.

Levi-Strauss, Claude

Music, moody food of us that trade in love.

William Shakespeare

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky

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

Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing.

John Erskine

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

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

10.

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

Wordsworth, William

11.

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

12.

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

Beerbohm, Sir Max

13.

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)

14.

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

Johnson, James Weldon

15.

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

16.

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

Szell, George

17.

A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.

Giles, Henry

18.

Music is the key to the female heart.

Seume, Johann G.

19.

You are the music while the music lasts.

Eliot, T. S.

20.

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

Grant, Ulysses S.

21.

If a thing isn't worth saying, you sing it.

Pierre Beaumarchais

22.

Mozart is sweet sunshine.

Dvorak, Antonin

23.

Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.

Oscar Wilde

24.

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

Cocteau, Jean

25.

Music is only love looking for words.

Durrell, Lawrence

26.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Stravinsky, Igor

27.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

28.

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.

G. K. Chesterton

29.

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

30.

I like Beethoven, especially the poems.

Starr, Ringo

31.

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

32.

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

Dan Rather

33.

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

34.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Johnson, Samuel

35.

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

36.

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

Aldous Huxley

37.

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

Robert Fripp

38.

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

Tate, Jeffrey

39.

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

40.

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

Brown, James

41.

I hate music, especially when it's played.

Jimmy Durante

42.

I wish Frank Sinatra would just shut up and sing.

Bacall, Lauren

43.

Music should never be harmless.

Robertson, Robbie

44.

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

45.

It was called the Backstreet Market, and it was just like a local hangout. That was where the kids would drive their cars, hang out with their convertibles and listen to music. That's how we got Backstreet. We put Boys on it, because no matter how old we get, we'll always be boys.

Richardson, Kevin

46.

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

Gibbons, Billy

47.

Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.

Sousa, John Philip

48.

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.

49.

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

50.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De