Music Quotes

I call architecture frozen music.

Goethe

Prima la musica, poi le parole first the music, then the words.

Antonio Salieri, title of an opera

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.

I wish you music to help with the burdens of life, and to help you release your happiness to others.

Ludwig van Beethoven

The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.

Sir Thomas Beecham

Without music, life would be a mistake.

Friedrich Nietzsche

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

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

James Joseph Sylveste

Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music - The world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.

Henry Mille

Music is the vernacular of the human soul.

Geoffrey Latham

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

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

Robert Fripp

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Music is essentially useless, as life is.

George Santayana

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

Georges Clemenceau

Number is the Word but is not utterance it is wave and light, though no one sees it it is rhythm and music, though no one hears it. Its variations are limitless and yet it is immutable. Each form of life is a particular reverberation of Number.

Maurice Druon

Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.

Frederick the Great

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

Igor Stravinsky

Music is Love in search of a word.

Sidney Lanie

Making music should not be left to the professionals.

Michelle Shocked

The human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out a tune for a dancing bear, when we hope with our music to move the stars.

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

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

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

June Masters Bache

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

S. J. Perelman

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

Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten imparting grace.

Plato

Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good plays, good company, good conversation - - what are they They are the happiest people in the world.

William Lyon Phelps

The truest expression of a people is in its dance and music.

Agnes de Mille

The best, most beautiful, and most perfect way that we have of expressing a sweet concord of mind to each other is by music.

Jonathan Edwards

Life without music would be a mistake.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

Thomas Carlyle

I play the notes as they are written, but it is God who makes the music.

J. S. Bach

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 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

Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness.

George Jean Nathan

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

Pablo Casals

The music at a wedding procession always reminds me of the music of soldiers going into battle.

Heinrich Heine