Motivational Quotes

Music

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

- Wordsworth, William

Best Quotes about Music

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

Wilson, Colin

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

Carlyle, Thomas

I hate music, especially when it's played.

Jimmy Durante

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

Since music is a language with some meaning at least for the immense majority of mankind, although only a tiny minority of people are capable of formulating a meaning in it, and since it is the only language with the contradictory attributes of being at once intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of man, a mystery that all the various disciplines come up against and which holds the key to their progress.

Levi-Strauss, Claude

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.

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

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

Dan Rather

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

10.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Stravinsky, Igor

11.

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

Tate, Jeffrey

12.

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

13.

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

14.

Berlioz says nothing in his music, but he says it magnificently.

Huneker, James G.

15.

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

16.

If anyone has conducted a Beethoven performance, and then doesn't have to go to an osteopath, then there's something wrong.

Rattle, Simon

17.

There is two kinds of music the good and bad. I play the good kind.

Armstrong, Louis

18.

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

Ruskin, John

19.

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

Addison, Joseph

20.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John

21.

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

Pavarotti, Luciano

22.

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

23.

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

Franklin, Aretha

24.

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

25.

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

Coward, Noel

26.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

27.

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

Lynn, Loretta

28.

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

29.

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

Plato

30.

Music is the vernacular of the human soul.

Latham, Geoffrey

31.

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

Sousa, John Philip

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.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky

34.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

35.

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

Billings, Josh

36.

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

37.

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

Newman, Ernest

38.

Canned music is like audible wallpaper.

Cooke, Alistair

39.

Music is only love looking for words.

Durrell, Lawrence

40.

Music is a discipline, and a mistress of order and good manners, she makes the people milder and gentler, more moral and more reasonable.

Martin Luther

41.

Music is a readily available, highly effective tool that you use to improve both your cognitive and physical abilities.

Winter, Arthur

42.

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)

43.

I would advise you to keep your overhead down; avoid a major drug habit; play everyday, and take it in front of other people. They need to hear it, and you need them to hear it.

Taylor, James

44.

The high note is not the only thing.

Domingo, Placido

45.

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

Luther, Martin

46.

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

Woody Allen

47.

It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness and of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature, and everlasting beauty of monotony.

Britten, Benjamin

48.

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

Brown, James

49.

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

Aldous Huxley

50.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van