Quotes about music

"Extraordinary how potent cheap music is."

Coward, Noel on music   

"Don't play what's there, play what's not there."

Davis, Miles on music
4 fans of this quote   

"Good music is very close to primitive language."

Diderot, Denis on music   

"Composers shouldn't think too much -- it interferes with their plagiarism."

Dietz, Howard on music   

"The high note is not the only thing."

Domingo, Placido on music   

"Music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable."

Duffecy, James on music
11 fans of this quote   

"Music was invented to confirm human loneliness."

Durrell, Lawrence on music
4 fans of this quote   

"Music is only love looking for words."

Durrell, Lawrence on music
14 fans of this quote   

"Mozart is sweet sunshine."

Dvorak, Antonin on music   

"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."

Einstein, Albert on music
8 fans of this quote   

"You are the music while the music lasts."

Eliot, T. S. on music
12 fans of this quote   

"I always seem to have a vague feeling that he is a Satan among musicians, a fallen angel in the darkness who is perpetually seeking to fight his way back to happiness."

Ellis, Havelock on music   

"Music causes us to think eloquently."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on music
10 fans of this quote   

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

Erskine, John on music   

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

Franklin, Aretha on music
3 fans of this quote   

"Americans want grungy people, stabbing themselves in the head on stage. They get a bright bunch like us, with deodorant on, they don't get it."

Gallagher, Liam on music   

"Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding he sings."

Gardner, Edward on music   

"Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay buried in the memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh. A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me."

Genet, Jean on music   

"True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today."

Gershwin, George on music
3 fans of this quote   

"Sounds like the blues are composed of feeling, finesse, and fear."

Gibbons, Billy on music   

"A song will outlive all sermons in the memory."

Giles, Henry on music   

"The effects of good music are not just because it's new; on the contrary music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on music
5 fans of this quote   

"You're talking to someone who really understands rock music."

Gore, Tipper on music   

"I know only two tunes. One them is Yankee Doodle and the other isn't."

Grant, Ulysses S. on music   

"A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges."

Green, Benny on music   

"When Mozart was composing at the end of the eighteenth century, the city of Vienna 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."

Halpern, Steven on music   

"Words are poor interpreters in the realms of emotion. When all words end, music begins; when they suggest, it realizes; and hence is the secret of its strange, inexpressible power."

Haweis, H. R. on music   

"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."

Herschel, Sir John on music   

"I am fond of music I think because it is so amoral. Everything else is moral and I am after something that isn't. I have always found moralizing intolerable."

Hesse, Hermann on music   

"It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites --opposite bents, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where there is no polarity --where energies flow smoothly in one direction --there will be much doing but no music."

Hoffer, Eric on music   

"Without Elvis, none of us could have made it."

Holly, Buddy on music   

"Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water-bath is to the body."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on music
3 fans of this quote   

"Country music is three chords and the truth."

Howard, Harlan on music   

"Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune."

Hubbard, Elbert on music   

"Music expresses that which can not be said and on which it is impossible to be silent"

Hugo, Victor on music
3 fans of this quote   

"Berlioz says nothing in his music, but he says it magnificently."

Huneker, James G. on music   

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

Huxley, Aldous on music
3 fans of this quote   

"I was a veteran before I was a teenager."

Jackson, Michael on music   

"The history of a people is found in its songs."

Jellinek, George on music   

"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."

Joel, Billy on music
4 fans of this quote