Motivational Quotes

Music

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

- Robert Fripp

Best Quotes about Music

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

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

Hugo, Victor

Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be absolutely deaf.

Wilde, Oscar

Music is the vernacular of the human soul.

Latham, Geoffrey

You are the music while the music lasts.

Eliot, T. S.

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

Miller, Henry

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

Schnabel, Artur

People whose sensibility is destroyed by music in trains, airports, lifts, cannot concentrate on a Beethoven Quartet.

Lutoslawski, Witold

10.

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

11.

The history of a people is found in its songs.

Jellinek, George

12.

A lot of people are singing about how screwed up the world is, and I don't think that everybody wants to hear about that all the time.

Carey, Mariah

13.

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

Wilson, Colin

14.

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

15.

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

Edgar Wilson Nye

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Davis, Miles

20.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

21.

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

Spinoza, Baruch (Benedict de)

22.

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

G. K. Chesterton

23.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

24.

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

Brown, James

25.

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

26.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

27.

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

Winter, Arthur

28.

Country music is three chords and the truth.

Howard, Harlan

29.

The high note is not the only thing.

Domingo, Placido

30.

If you can walk you can dance. If you can talk you can sing.

Proverb, Zimbabwe

31.

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

John Erskine

32.

My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.

Martin Luther

33.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

34.

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

Wilde, Oscar

35.

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

Grant, Ulysses S.

36.

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

Woody Allen

37.

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

Sousa, John Philip

38.

Music causes us to think eloquently.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

39.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

40.

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

Robert Fripp

41.

Mozart is sweet sunshine.

Dvorak, Antonin

42.

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

Luther, Martin

43.

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

William Shakespeare

44.

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

45.

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

Dan Rather

46.

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

Tate, Jeffrey

47.

Music is only love looking for words.

Durrell, Lawrence

48.

People compose for many reasons: to become immortal; because the pianoforte happens to be open; because they want to become a millionaire; because of the praise of friends; because they have looked into a pair of beautiful eyes; for no reason whatsoever.

Schumann, Robert

49.

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

50.

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