Music Quotes

Let a short Act of Parliament be passed, placing all street musicians outside the protection of the law, so that any citizen may assail them with stones, sticks, knives, pistols, or bombs without incurring any penalties.

George Bernard Shaw

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

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

Berthald Auerbach

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

Vladimir Nabokov

Swearing is like any other music... If it is not done well, if it is not done with a fine and discriminating art, and vitalized with gracious and heartborn feeling, it lacks beauty, it lacks charm, it lacks expression, it lacks nobleness, it lacks majesty...

David Gridley, Indiantown

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 think there are only three things America will be known for 2, 000 years from now when they study this civilization the Constitution, jazz music, and baseball.

Gerald Early

The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted.

William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

Aldous Huxley, "Music at Night", 1931

Music is the last true voice of the human spirit. It can go beyond language, beyond age, and beyond color straight to the mind and heart of all people.

Ben Harpe

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

The music business was not safe, but it was FUN. It was like falling in love with a woman you know is bad for you, but you love every minute with her, anyway.

Lionel Richie

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

Without music life would be a mistake.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

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

Pablo Casals

A poet is an unhappy being whose heart it torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music... and then people crowd about the poet and say to him: Sing for us soon again; that is as much as to say. May new sufferings torment your soul.

Soren Kierkegaard

I always felt rock and roll was very, very wholesome music.

Aretha Franklin

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

Igor Stravinsky

Life without music would be a mistake.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

For none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

Gustave Flaubert, Charles Bovary

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

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Leo Tolstoy

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

Ricard

Those little nimble musicians of the air, that warble forth their curious ditties, with which nature hath furnished them to the shame of art.

Izaak Walton

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

Joseph Addison

Music has charms to soothe the savage breast To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.

William Congreve, The Mourning Bride, Act 1 Scene 1

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

Georges Clemenceau

Without music, life would be a mistake.

Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Angela Monet

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

James Joseph Sylveste

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

Ludwig van Beethoven

Those who danced where thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.

Angela Mont

My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.

Edith Sitwell

Love is like a violin. The music may stop now and then, but the strings remain forever.

June Masters Bache

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)

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

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