Music Quotes

Without music, life would be a mistake.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Music is the vernacular of the human soul.

Geoffrey Latham

Life without music would be a mistake.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

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

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky, In Observer 8 Oct. 1961

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

Friedrich Nietzsche

If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed 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.

There is no law against composing music when one has no ideas whatsoever. The music of Wagner, therefore, is perfectly legal.

The National, Paris, 1850

Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.

Joseph Addison

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

Henry David Thoreau

Music is the soul of language.

Max Heindel

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

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

Truman Capote

I could be whatever I wanted to be if I trusted that music, that song, that vibration of God that was inside of ME.

Shirley MacLaine

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.

George Eliot

Hell is full of musical amateurs music is the brandy of the damned.

George Bernard Shaw

Those who dance were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.

Angela Monet

The earth has music for those who listen.

William Shakespeare

If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music... and of aviation.

Tom Stoppard

Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.

Marcel Marceau

My loathings are simple stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.

Vladimir Nabokov

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 faraway.

Henry David Thoreau

The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts. Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good company, good conversation, are the happiest people in the world. And they are not only happy in themselves, they are the cause of happiness in others.

William Lyon Phelps

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be.

Abraham Maslow

Of all the music that reached farthest into heaven, it is the beating of a loving heart.

Henry Ward Beeche

We pass the word around; we ponder how the case is put by different people, we read the poetry; we meditate over the literature; we play the music; we change our minds; we reach an understanding. Society evolves this way, not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other.

Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail (1979)

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

Charlie Brown, Peanuts, Charles M. Schulz

Music - - The one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge, which comprehends mankind, but which mankind cannot comprehend.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Next to theology I give to music the highest place and honor. And we see how David and all the saints have wrought their godly thoughts into verse, rhyme, and song.

Luthe

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.

Bob Marley

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

Friedrich von Schelling

Marty This tasteless cover is a good indication of the lack of musical invention within. The musical growth of this band cannot even be charted. They are treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad poetry.

This Is Spinal Tap

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

Victor Hugo

When words fail, music speaks.

Hans Christian Anderson

A guidance counselor who has made a fetish of security, or who has unwittingly surrendered his thinking to economic determinism, may steer a youth away from his dream of becoming a poet, an artist, a musician or any other of thousands of things, because it offers no security, it does not pay well, there are no vacancies, it has no future.

Henry M. Wriston

Every single one of us can do things that no one else can do - - Can love things that no one else can love. We are like violins. We can be used for doorstops, or we can make music. You know what to do.

Barbara She

We pass the word around we ponder how the case is put by different people, we read the poetry we meditate over the literature we play the music we change our minds we reach an understanding. Society evolves this way, not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other.

Lewis Thomas