Music Quotes

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

Aldous Huxley, "Music at Night", 1931

Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.

E. M. Cioran

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

It is only by introducing the young to great literature, drama and music, and to the excitement of great science that we open to them the possibilities that lie within the human spirit - - Enable them to see visions and dream dreams.

Eric Anderson

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

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

Ludwig van Beethoven

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

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

Angela Monet

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

I see music as the augmentation of a split second of time.

Erin Cleary

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

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

Charlie Parke

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

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

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

Berthald Auerbach

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

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

William Congreve

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

George Bernard Shaw

The earth has music for those who listen.

William Shakespeare

Life without music would be a mistake.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

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

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

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky, In Observer 8 Oct. 1961

When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had and never will have.

Edgar Watson Howe

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

Marcel Marceau

My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.

Martin Luthe

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

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

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

The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

Music is essentially useless, as life is.

George Santayana

What omniscience has music! So absolutely impersonal, yet every sufferer feels his secret sorrow soothed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

My life is music. And in some vague, mysterious, and subconscious way, I have always been driven by a taut inner spring which has propelled me to almost compulsively reach for perfection in music, often - - In fact, mostly - - At the expense of everything else in my life.

Stan Getz

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

S. J. Perelman

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

Samuel Johnson

Music is a discipline, and a mistress of order and good manners, she makes the people milder and gentler, more moral and more reasonable.

Martin Luthe