Music Quotes

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

Frank Zappa

Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak. N. B. This quote is commonly misquoted as savage beast.

William Congreve

We are a spectacular, splendid manifestation of life. We have language.... We have affection We have genes for usefulness, and usefulness is about as close to a common goal of nature as I can guess at. And finally, and perhaps best of all, we have music.

Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail (1979)

Making music should not be left to the professionals.

Michelle Shocked

To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.

Aaron Copland

Music is essentially useless, as life is: but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.

George Santayana, Life of Reason (1905) vol. 4, ch. 4

The prelude to Tristan and Isolde sounded as if a bomb had fallen into a large music factory and had thrown all the notes into confusion.

The Tribune, Berlin, 1871

Good music is good music, and everything else can go to hell.

Dave Matthews, VH1 Special: Trey And Dave Go To Africa

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Leo Tolstoy

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

I tried to resist his overtures, but he plied me with symphonies, quartettes, chamber music, and cantatas.

S. J. Perelman

Master your instrument, master the music, and then forget all that crap and just play.

Charlie Parke

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

Henry David Thoreau, "Walden".

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

John Erskine

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

Robert Fripp

There are more bad musicians than there is bad music.

Isaac Stern

Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart.

Pablo Casals

How good bad music and bad reasons sound when one marches against an enemy!

Friedrich Nietzsche

Aunt Marion was right... Never marry a musician, and never answer the door.

Charlie Brown, Peanuts, Charles M. Schulz

How good bad music and bad reasons sound when we march against an enemy.

Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Ludwig van Beethoven

Use what talents you have; the woods would have little music if no birds sang their song except those who sang best.

Reverend Oliver G. Wilson

May not Music be described as the Mathematics of sense, and Mathematics as the Music of reason?

James Joseph Sylveste

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 Thompson

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

George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, 1860

If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The earth has grown old with its burden of care But at Christmas it always is young, The heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair And its soul full of music breaks the air, When the song of angels is sung.

Phillips Brooks

I call architecture frozen music.

Goethe

Nevertheless the passions, whether violent or not, should never be so expressed as to reach the point of causing disgust; and music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

It is in learning music that many youthful hearts learn to love.

Ricard

Music is a medicine for many... Silence is a poison for some...

Jacqui We

There are so many opportunities in life, that the loss of two or three capabilities is not necessarily debilitating. A handicap can give you the opportunity to focus more on art, writing, or music.

Jim Davis

We should get into the habit of reading inspirational books, looking at inspirational pictures, hearing inspirational music, associating with inspirational friends.

Alfred A. Montapert

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

Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases, though not often.

Samuel Butle

Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.

E. M. Cioran

Since it architecture is music in space, as it were a frozen music.

Friedrich von Schelling