Motivational Quotes

Music

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)

Best Quotes about Music

Rock 'n Roll is monotony tinged with hysteria.

Packard, Vance

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

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw

Music is only love looking for words.

Durrell, Lawrence

Music like religion, unconditionally brings in its train all the moral virtues to the heart it enters, even though that heart is not in the least worthy.

Jean Baptiste Montegut

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.

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 fourth great material want, first food, then clothes, then shelter, then music.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

10.

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

11.

The history of a people is found in its songs.

Jellinek, George

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

John Erskine

15.

Canned music is like audible wallpaper.

Cooke, Alistair

16.

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

17.

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

Dietz, Howard

18.

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

19.

I resent performing for frisking idiots who don't know anything.

Lennon, John

20.

A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.

Giles, Henry

21.

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

Johnson, Samuel

22.

One is hardly sensible of fatigue while he marches to music.

Carlyle, Thomas

23.

[T]here's no bad day that can't be overcome by listening to a barbershop quartet; this is just truth, plain and simple.

Chuck Sigars

24.

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

Edgar Wilson Nye

25.

I think my fans will follow me into our combined old age. Real musicians and real fans stay together for a long, long time.

Raitt, Bonnie

26.

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

Robert Fripp

27.

I hate music, especially when it's played.

Jimmy Durante

28.

The high note is not the only thing.

Domingo, Placido

29.

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

Sousa, John Philip

30.

Mozart is sweet sunshine.

Dvorak, Antonin

31.

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

Szell, George

32.

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

William Shakespeare

33.

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

Hugo, Victor

34.

There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.

George Eliot

35.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

36.

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

37.

Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

38.

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

39.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John

40.

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

41.

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

Johnson, James Weldon

42.

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

43.

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

44.

Rock 'n Roll is an asylum for emotional idiots.

Neville, Richard

45.

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

46.

There once was a brainy baboon who always breathed down a bassoon for he said, It appears that in billions of years I shall certainly hit on a tune.

Pound, Ezra

47.

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

48.

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)

49.

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

50.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Conroy, Pat