Music Quotes



No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible. -W. H. Auden

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. -Berthold Auerbach

When music fails to agree to the ear, to soothe the ear and the heart and the senses, then it had missed the point. - Maria Callas

I am amazed at radio DJ's today. I am firmly convinced that AM on my radio stands for Absolute Moron. I will not begin to tell you what FM stands for. -Jasper Carrott

Music was invented to confirm human loneliness. -Lawrence Durrell

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

I know only two tunes: one of them is "Yankee Doodle" and the other one isn't. -Ulysses S. Grant

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

Music expresses that which can not be said and on which it is impossible to be silent. -Victor Hugo

Only sick music makes money today. -Nietzsche

Music is esentially useless, as is life. -George Santayana

Hell is full of musical amateurs. -George Bernard Shaw

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts. -Percy Shelley

Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end. -Igor Stravinsky

Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence of it in their opinions and lives that they have heard it. It would not leave them narrow-minded and bigoted. -Thoreau

Most rock journalism is people who can not write interviewing people who can not talk. -Frank Zappa

The typical rock fan is not smart enough to know when he is being dumped on. -Frank Zappa

"The soul of music slumbers in the shell
Till waked and kindled by the master's spell;
And feeling hearts, touch them but rightly, pour
A thousand melodies unheard before!"
— Samuel Rogers

"See deep enough, and you see musically;
the heart of nature being everywhere music."
— Thomas Carlyle

"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent."

"The only explanation for her being a musician is that she likes to sleep late."

"If music be the food of love, play on."— Shakespeare

MUSIC IS—

"An outburst of the soul."— Frederick Deluis

"After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible."— Aldous Huxley

"Love in search of a word."— Sidney Lanier

"The universal language of mankind."— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Moonlight in the gloomy night of life."— Jean Paul Richter

"The art which is most nigh to tears and memory."— Oscar Wilde

"What feelings sound like."— Anon.

"As I continue to write and study New Orleans music and Duke Ellington, I keep coming to more and more conclusions about all of the things that are here in America for the musician to use. The thing you have to try for is the emotional specificity that only comes from learning the correct techniques for this art form. Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong, and Jelly Roll Morton had the understanding in their music. So did King Oliver."--Wynton Marsalis

"I don't like to hear someone put down dixieland. Those people who say there's no music but bop are just stupenna was so quiet that fire alarms could be given verbally, by a shouting watchman mounted on top of St. Stefan's Cathedral. In twentieth-century society, the noise level is such that it keeps knocking our bodies out of tune and out of their natural rhythms. This ever-increasing assault of sound upon our ears, minds, and bodies adds to the stress load of civilized beings trying to live in a highly complex environment.~ Steven Halpern ~

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.~ Sir John Herschel ~

Without Elvis, none of us could have made it.~ Buddy Holly ~

Country music is three chords and the truth.~ Harlan Howard ~

The history of a people is found in its songs.~ George Jellinek ~

I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It's something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music.~ Billy Joel ~

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

Music is the vernacular of the human soul.~ Geoffrey Latham ~

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.~ Hal A. Lingerman ~

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

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.~ Thomas Mann ~

Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.~ Pietro Mascagni ~

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

Like everything else in nature, music is a becoming, and it becomes its full self, when its sounds and laws are used by intelligent man for the production of harmony, and so made the vehicle of emotion and thought.~ Theodore Mungers ~

A good composer is slowly discovered a bad composer is slowly found out.~ Ernest Newman ~

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

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.~ Bill Nye ~

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.~ Charlie Parker ~

If you can walk you can dance. If you can talk you can sing.~ Zimbabwe Proverb ~

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

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

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.~ Kevin Richardson ~

Music should never be harmless.~ Robbie Robertson ~

Give me a laundry list and I'll set it to music.~ Gioacchino Antonio Rossini ~

Music is the key to the female heart.~ Johann G. Seume ~

Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale souls out of men's bodies?~ William Shakespeare ~

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

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.~ George Steiner ~

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.~ Igor Stravinsky ~

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

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

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.~ James Taylor ~

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.~ Paul Whiteman ~

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.~ Oscar Wilde ~

There's a basic rule which runs through all kinds of music, kind of an unwritten rule. I don't know what it is. But I've got it.~ Ron Wood ~

All my concerts had no sounds in them; they were completely silent. People had to make up their own music in their minds!~ Yoko Ono ~

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another.~ Frank Zappa ~

"...And as the players tried to take the field, the Marching Band refused to yield..." -Don McLean, American Pie



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