music quotes

The universe is more like music than matter.

Donald Andrews

Music is life's only true magic, treat it with all the respect that it deserves.

Bruce Swedien

When you read music, there is a part of your creativity that shuts down. It's like learning to paint with coloring books. It's like coloring within the lines-you don't take off. When you think about it, what music notes or a coloring book does is stifles creativity.

David Lynch

It is the culture-conditioned mind, rather than the ears, that do the listening today.

No music is totally "pure" and the vitality of a tradition can be measured by its ability to integrate new contributions.

If western musicians had to rely on their ears instead of their eyes to create music, where would it be today and in what form?

Within music lies all the wonders and keys to the miracles of life – natural and spiritual. Music can facilitate the process of change and growth.

Ted Andrews

Real music is not for wealth, not for honors or even the joys of the mind…but is a path for realization and salvation.

Ali Akbar Khan

True knowledge of sound carries with it great power. It allows one to travel without moving.

Joska Soos

Never before in the Western world have so many new instruments been devised and constructed as today. Only a few copies of each prototype are made in most cases, and in many instances there is only the original. Musicians make such instruments for themselves--and watch over them like a precious secret. Just as the masters of Asia have done for centuries--however, it is important to stress that the young people who behave similarly in the West are not imitating Asian customs. The initiative was entirely theirs. In that respect too the instruments they build and play are also becoming part of the current of world music.

Joachim-Ernst Berendt

That which cannot be expressed otherwise can only be told through music. A thought, which seems commonplace in its analysis, acquires a deeper sense in music.

Tagore

Music without words means leaving behind the mind. And leaving behind the mind is meditation. Meditation returns you to the source. And the source of all is sound.

Kabir

Music has eloquence of expression, greater than any other art.



The art of music is infinite yet complete in itself.

Tansen

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom or philosophy.

Beethoven

Mathematicians are able to break down into measure and figure what musicians do intuitively.



The art of music is endowed with a supernatural origin and a divine purpose, more so than any other art.

Liebniz

Folk music is the "original melody" of man; it is the "musical mirror" of the world.

Nietzsche

The fact that the "world is sound" isn't just a widespread myth or legend. It is confirmed in the established findings of fundamental harmonic research and many other disciplines. We have found the world's tonal character confirmed in DNA genes and electron spins, in the solar wind and geomagnetism, in the weather and in the "song" of flowers and plants.



Ever since the time of his incarnation, man has progressively lost his original spiritual perception. This has worked to divorce music and language from the natural harmonies and rhythms, which were and remain the primordial condition of all things.

Jocelyn Godwin

The characteristic healing power of music has been increasingly crippled in recent times, so that many have lost the desire even to listen to music, owing to the sheer, strident noise of the era of extreme materialism.

Jocelyn Godwin

It was probably the introduction of tempered tuning in the 18th century that resulted in ever-greater atrophy of awareness of overtones in Western music. That was inevitable because tempered tuning amounts to negation of natural tuning, which is postulated in every single note by way of the accompanying overtone series. It is almost as if a piece played in tempered tuning--and thus virtually all Western music--insists on correcting nature. Not a single note in such a piece is heard in its natural relationships--apart from the octave itself. Man's belief that he can do things better reigns.

Joachim-Ernst Berendt

In Eastern music, rich in overtones, the "system" creates the tones, whereas in Western music it is the notes that establish the system.

Joachim-Ernst Berendt

Music is the archetype of the cosmic order, and as such the most genuine of a world restored, but this holds true only so long as it has not fallen victim to a chaotic way of thinking.

Jocelyn Godwin

The more richly and consciously a music is endowed with overtones, the more timeless it is. The most timeless music on the planet comes from the great Indian classical tradition, which also disposes over the most differentiated awareness of harmonics.



O music, In your depths we deposit our hearts and souls. Thou hast taught us to see with our ears and hear with our hearts.

Khalil Gibran

Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.

Martin Luther

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



Speech is man's most confused and egocentric expression, his most orderly and magnanimous utterance is music.

Ned Rorem

It is music's lofty mission to shed light on the depths of the human heart.

Robert Schumann

Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions, which let themselves be described in words with such difficulty, are directly conveyed to man in music, and in that is its power and significance.

Leo Tolstoy

Which of these two powers, love or music, can elevate man to the sublimest heights? Why separate them? They are the two wings of the soul.

Hector Berlioz

Wouldst thou know if a people be well governed, or if its laws be good or bad, examine the music it practices.

Confucius

As the music is, so are the people of the country.

Turkish proverb

Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness and life to everything. Fine music is the essence of order and leads to all that is just and good, of which it is the invisible, but nevertheless dazzling, passionate and eternal form.

Plato

Music is the soil in that the spirit lives, thinks and invents.

Ludwig von Beethoven

Music should go right through you, leave some of itself inside you and take some of you with it when it leaves.



See deep enough and you see musically, the heart of nature being everywhere music, if you can only reach it.

Thomas Carlyle

Music can exist only if it reflects the inner life of humanity, not the outer life of its technology.

Alec Wilder

All true and deeply felt music, whether secular or sacred, has its home on the heights where art and religion dwell.

Albert Schweitzer

The rotation of the universe and the motion of the planets could neither begin nor continue without music...for everything is ordered by God according to the laws of harmony.

Plutarch

There is geometry in the humming of the strings. There is music in the spacing of the spheres.

Pythagoras

Music and religion are as intimately related as poetry and love. The deepest emotions require for their civilized expression the most emotional of the arts.

Will Durant

What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.

Gustav Mahler

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

Aldous Huxley

Music is the outward and audible signification of inward and spiritual realities.



Music is said to be the speech of angels, in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.

Thomas Carlyle

Mathematics is music for the mind; music is mathematics for the soul.





About Composing
To write great music, the musician must make his life a great song.



The practice of altering a composer's work was more prevalent before the romantic age. Bach and Handel rearranged the music of their contemporaries, either directly, or by incorporating it into a work of their own.



Ceaseless work, analysis, reflection, writing much, endless self-correction, that is my secret.

J.S. Bach

Music is glorious in its own right; why should it accept the slavery of words? Music begins where words end. The inexplicable is the domain of music. It can say what words cannot, and so the less the words disturb the song, the better.

Tagore

It is the duty of the composer to serve his fellow man, to beautify human life and point the way to a radiant future. Such is the immutable code of the artist as I see it.

Sergei Prokofiev

A poet always has too many words in his vocabulary, a painter too many colors on his palette, a musician too many notes on his keyboard.

Jean Coctau

We hide ourselves in our music to reveal ourselves.

Jim Morrison

The sacredness of church music, the joyfulness and soulfulness of folksongs are the two pivots around which revolve true music.



A nation creates music--the composer only arranges it.

Bela Bartok

I regard all popular music as irrelevant in the sense that people in 200 years won't be listening to what is being written and played today. I think they will be listening to Beethoven. That's one of the reasons I don't take myself seriously.

Elton John

It is proportion that beautifies everything, the whole universe consists of it, and music is measured by it.

Orlando Gibbons

Originality is the art of concealing your source.



You must have the composition in your head, not your head in the composition.



The unconscious is the womb of all musical creation; all masterpieces are born there.



The value of a composer's work resides in the music itself, and not in how frequently it is played, how many honors its composer has won, or how much critical acclaim has been received.



A creative artist works on his next composition because he is not satisfied with his previous one. When he loses a critical attitude towards his own work, he ceases to be an artist.



The composer joins heaven and earth with threads of sound.



Do things, act. Make a list of the music you love, then learn it by heart. And when you are writing music of your own, write it as you hear it inside and never strain to avoid the obvious.

Nadia Boulanger

Melody is the golden thread running through the maze of tones by which the ear is guided and the heart reached.



About Performing


The secret of effortless control is balance - continuous adjustment of continuous change. Like learning to ride a bike, using less and less means to control greater and greater power.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

The real authenticity we recognize is when the person is totally involved. If the art is created with the whole person, then the work will come out whole.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

The three ingredients for good music are pitch, passion and pocket.

Ed Seay

It is the finesse of the nuances and details that determines the quality of an interpretation.

Western musicians believe that the fundamental note is almost all that counts, so it occupies virtually all their attention. They are of the opinion that it "makes" the music. Eastern musicians have other experiences with their instruments. For them the "real" music derives from the overtones rather than the primary notes. The primary notes are only a tool, an extension of the instrument employed in this craft. In the view of Eastern musicians, anyone who remains at the level of the primary note, does not get beyond the admittently important technical aspects of music making.

Joachim-Ernst Berendt

The artist's mission in life is not to selfishly accumulate a lot of money by cheap trickery, but to use, in the finest manner of which he is capable, the rare gifts God has entrusted to him.

John Garth

In musicmaking time and again mention is made of: listening, perceiving, taking one's time, being attentive, observing the inner aspects of what's happening, allowing things to unfold without interfering, and being conscious--in other words, factors that are also important in meditation.

Joachim-Ernst Berendt

High concentration brings unawareness and thus spontaneity.



Freedom in music is the liberty to become ever more perfectly what essentially you are.



Maintain your focus, live in your ears, and bring all energies to hearing.

Traditional East Indian Teaching

Freedom for an artist is to be responsible to integrity, to honor, to the God-given destiny of his own soul. What does it profit a man to gain wealth and fame and intellectual ballyhoo, if he looses his own soul?

Merrill Root

Limitation creates form.

Krishnamurti

Only the flint of man's soul can strike fire in music.

Ludwig von Beethoven

The piece of music is worked out by the composer, but it is the performance which we enjoy. Thus the active and emotional principle in music occurs in the art of reproduction, which draws the eclectic spark from God and directs it towards the listener.



Don't play the notes. Play the meaning of the notes.

Pablo Casals

Music is the one thing in which there is no use trying to deceive others or make false pretenses.

Confucius

I think the main thing a musician would like to do is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe.

John Coltrane

Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn.

Charlie Parker

Risk is a crucial element of communication through music. Just as truly creative musicians must be willing to be open, to examine their inner life, to throw aside familiar comforts and plunge into the unknown, so they must take risks during performance.



If there is to be communication with the listener, the musician's doors leading inward must stay open. Through this opening, the listener is invited into the reality of the musician. This involves risk for the performer. The inner world of the musician, the creative fount, is personal and sacred.



In a performance setting, there can be no monologues. Every note, every breath, each moment sends messages between musician and listener. To ignore this two-way flow of feeling and meaning is to relinquish artistry for ego-gratification.



Competition is for horses, not artists.

Bela Bartok

We can never exhaust the multiplicity of nuances and subtleties, which make the charm of music. How can we expect to produce a vital performance if we don't recreate the work everytime? Every year the leaves of the trees reappear with the spring but they are different every time.

Pablo Casals

A musician just has to learn for himself, just by playing and listening. There is no one who can write down the feeling you have to have. That's from inside yourself. The music has to let you be, you've got to stay free inside it.



An abundance of technique should not be a means to an end but a way to allow the heart to expand freely.



Notation, the writing out of compositions, is primarily an ingenious expedient for catching an inspiration, with the purpose of exploiting it later. But notation is to improvisation as the portrait to the living model. It is up to the interpreter to resolve the rigidity of the signs into the emotion.



The heart of a melody can never be put down on paper.

Pablo Casals

The written note is like a straightjacket, whereas music, like life itself, is constant movement, continuous spontaneity, free from any restrictions.



The musician must bring to the performance the utter confidence in the ability of the spirit to reach out to the souls of the audience. This faith may be the most important quality the musician can contribute to the performance. Without it, even the most technically adroit will fail to fulfill the role of music as divine communicator. The ego, that self-hoping for acclaim, must be relinquished at this time. While it has been a motivating force in propelling one toward certain musical goals, at the moment of performance, the ego must be set aside so that the spirit may be heard.



Your playing must have conviction. It should show the measure of your belief in what you know to be true, to the point where you would stake your life on it. The inner fire must always show through. Play from the inside out; your sound should stem from the conviction of your soul. This is what makes vital music.

Philip Toshio Sudo

About Improvisation

Do not fear mistakes. There are none.

Miles Davis

Improvising is the most natural and widespread form of music making. Up until the last century, it was integral even to our literate musical tradition in the West.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

Trying to realize the essence of creating music by using dots on a page is no more possible than realizing the essence of painting by using coloring books.

Many western musicians are fabulously skilled at playing black dots on a printed page, but mystified by how the dots got there in the first place and apprehensive of playing without dots. Music theory does not help here; it teaches rules of the grammar, but not what to say. The real story of improvisation is spontaneous expression, and is therefore a spiritual and a psychological story rather than a story about the technique.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

Improvisation, it is a mystery. You can write a book about it, but by the end no one still knows what it is. When I improvise and I'm in good form, I'm like somebody half sleeping. I even forget that there are people in front of me. Great improvisers are like priests, they are thinking only of their God.

Stephane Grappelli

The fruits of improvising may flower spontaneously, but it arises from soil that we have prepared, fertilized, and tended in the faith that it will ripen in nature's own time.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

The primary function of improvisation is to be expressive and emotional; to improvise, one must be in a certain state, and at the same time, improvisation, by inducing surprise and novelty, provides the interpreter with a special emotion that is perceived as the effect of a transcendental inspiration.

Dariush Safvat

Composing is the "ego-trip par excellence". The musical activity most diametrically opposed to composing is improvising. We know that there are some cultures where the composer dominates--above all in Western music and others where the improviser rules, as almost everywhere else in the world. However, both improvisers and composers exist in almost all cultures, and there are borderline cases where it is often not possible to determine whether something has been composed or is being improvised. In most cases it turns out that what was originally improvised has been repeated so often over the course of time that it has taken on the character of something composed even though it is not written down.

Joachim-Ernst Berendt

The joy in improvising while singing and playing is evident in almost all phases of music history. It is always a powerful force in the creation of new forms and every historical study that confines itself to the practical and theoretical sources that have come down to us in writing or in print, without taking into account the improvisational element in living musical practice, must of necessity present an incomplete, indeed a distorted picture. For there is scarcely a single field in music that has remained unaffected by improvisation, scarcely a single musical technique or form of composition that did not originate in improvisatory practice or was not essentially influenced by it. The whole history of the development of music is accompanied by manifestations of the drive to improvise.

E.T. Ferand

The first challenge of an improvising artist is to unify the diverse response of an audience so that it becomes a part of the creation. This co-creation exists in a timeless area of subconscious communication where the improviser becomes the articulate voice of the group. The compassion of this inspired moment of unity is the reason for improvised music.

Dave Brubeck

Improvisation is the only artform in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time. It is the hidden things, the subconscious that lets you know you feel this, you play this.

Ornette Coleman

It is a truism, that many of the recorded improvised masterpieces are of a technical complexity, which would be quite beyond the ability of their creators to play them, where they faced with the notes written out as a composition.

Benny Green

Improvisation is not the expression of accident but rather of the accumulated yearnings, dreams and wisdom of our very soul.

Yehudi Menuhin

To many, improvisation seems to be the most difficult aspect of music, but in reality, it is the most natural.



About Practicing
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When we explode the artificial categories of exercise and real music, each tone we play is at once an exploration of technique and a full expression of spirit.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

Don't mistake activity for achievement. Business does not equal productiveness.

Let the time you spend with art flow through three natural phases: invocation... work...gratitude.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

Acquiring a technique in the world of music is a much misunderstood term. If there is a technique at all, it is the drawing out and integrating of all parts of the person. One needs imagination with clarity, drive with sensitivity.

Herbert Whone

To do anything artistically you have to acquire technique, but create through your technique and not with it.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

Patience is the key to learning music. It requires time to take root in the soul before it can blossom. There is no rushing nature.

Nancy Lesh

What counts is not the number of hours you put in, but how much you put in the hours.

We think of practice as an activity done in a special context to prepare for performance or the "real thing." But if we split practice from the real thing, neither of them will be very real.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

Some people succeed because they are destined to, but most people succeed because they are determined to.

Concentrate on your task.

Gandhi

If we do not strive for inner perfection, we will remain what we are now, talking animals. The perfect man, the complete man, lies within each of us.

Singing instrumental music is most important because, while you play an instrument, you are singing through the instrument...actually, you are singing inside.

Ali Akbar Khan

Intensify your path, immerse yourself in sound.

Joska Soos

The difference between good and great is consistency.

ESPN

The start of every true advance must be accompanied by a readiness for sacrifice and involvement. In addition, one must also have the capacity fully and willingly to acknowledge something greater than oneself.

Marius Schneider

Though it is good to start your study of an instrument with a classically trained musician, because of their attention to detail and desire for purity of sound, at a certain point you need to move away, because their obsession with "perfection" is life threatening to the music.



Whoever learns by listening, mainly playing his own music, and doing without notation (or at most making reluctant and incomplete use of its possibilities), leaves music where it belongs: In time where listening is the prime sense. Whoever learns a piece of music by reading it, principally playing the music of others and perfecting notation to an ever greater extent, transports music into an ultimately alien dimension: Into space whose cardinal sense is seeing.

Joachim-Ernst Berendt

Sarasate, the great Spanish violinist of the last century, was once called a genius by a famous critic. In reply to this, Sarasate shook his head and snorted: "Genius! For thirty-seven years I have practiced 14 hours a day, and now they call me a genius."



Perfect your art in the wee hours of the morning, when all is still.

Nicolas Roerich

Teaching music is not my main purpose. I want to make good citizens. If children hear fine music from the day of their birth and learn to play it, they develop sensitivity, discipline and endurance. They get a beautiful heart.

Shinichi Suzuki

Repetitious practice without proper attention to detail probably does more harm than good.



The question is whether a noble song is produced by nature or by knowledge. I neither believe in mere labor being of avail without a rich vein of talent, nor in natural ability which is not educated.

Horace (65 - 8 B.C.)

Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the secret places of the soul.

Plato

Practice in minute detail until every note is imbued with internal life and has taken its place in the overall design.

Pablo Casals

By concentrating on precision, one arrives at technique, but by concentrating on technique one does not arrive at precision.



Many people say that too much study kills spontaneity in music, but although study may kill a small talent, it is a must to develop a big one.

George Gershwin

Repetition is the mother of talent.



Technique is the ability to lay open the basic sense of a great work of art, to make it clear.


The music teacher came twice a week to bridge the awful gap between Dorothy and Chopin.

George Ade 

Every illness is a musical problem, and every cure has a musical solution.

Novalis

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

Music is everybody's possession. Only publishers think that people own it.
- John Lennon

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
- Maya Angelou

Where words fail, music speaks.
- Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875)

All the sounds of the earth are like music.
- Oscar Hammerstein (1895-1960)

Music creates order out of chaos: for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent, melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous.
- Yehudi Menuhin

It had never occurred to me before that music and thinking are so much alike. In fact you could say music is another way of thinking, or maybe thinking is another kind of music.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

In music one must think with the heart and feel with the brain.
- George Szell

. . . I improvised, crazed by the music. . . . Even my teeth and eyes burned with fever. Each time I leaped I seemed to touch the sky and when I regained earth it seemed to be mine alone.
- Josephine Baker

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.
- Pat Conroy

The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music ...Bodies never lie...
- Agnes De Mile

"And these .. these phrases you keep speaking in. They don't make any sense." "Ah, you seek meaning?" "Yes." "Then listen to the music, not the song."
- Kosh and Talia Winters in Babylon 5:"Deathwalker"

Music — The one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.
- Ludwig van Beethoven

Music is a higher revelation than philosophy.
- Ludwig van Beethoven

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.
- Ludwig van Beethoven

Give me a laundry list and I'll set it to music.
- Gioacchini Antonio Rossini

Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.
- Voltaire

I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
- Elvis Presley

A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.
- Sir Thomas Beecham

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, 'Is there a meaning to music?' My answer would be, 'Yes.' And 'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?' My answer to that would be, 'No.'
-Aaron Copland

What passions cannot music raise or quell?
-John Driden

An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger.
-Dan Rather

I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth get cleaner?
-Frank Zappa (in response to Tipper Gore's allegations that music incites people or influences their behavior in general)

Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.
- Joseph Addison

The soul of music slumbers in the shell. Till waked and kindled by the master's spell; And feeling hearts, touch them but rightly, pour A thousand melodies unheard before!
- Samuel Rogers

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.
- Victor Hugo

Yes; as the music changes, Like a prismatic glass; It takes the light and ranges Through all the moods that pass.
- Alfred Noyes

If music be the food of love, play on.
- Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
- Berthold Auerbach

"I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to."
- Elvis Presley (1935-1977)

"There is nothing stable in the world; uproar's your only music."
- John Keats

"There is always music amongst the trees in the garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it."
- M. Aumonier

"Look at the stars sometimes. They are only notes They are music."
- Pat Conroy

"Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness."
- George Jean Nathan

"Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought."
- E.Y. Harbug (1898 - 1981)

"Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together."
- Anais Nin

"Music that gentlier on the spirit lies Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes."
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"The Mandolin is the bottom four strings of the guitar, backwards...so a person with dyslexia has no problem learning to play the Mandolin."
- Steve Goodman

"It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page."
- Joan Baez

"Love is like a violin. The music may stop now and then, but the strings remain forever."
- June Masters Bacher

"Without music, life is a journey through a desert"
- Pat Conroy

"Do I listen to pop music because I'm miserable or am I miserable because listen to pop music?"
- John Cusack (Rob Gordon) High Fidelity

"Music creates order out of chaos: for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent, melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous."
- Yehudi Menuhin

"Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end."
- Igor Stravinskey

"I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'"
- Bob Newhart

"Approach your guitar intelligently, and if there are limits, don't deny them. Work within your restrictions. Somethings you can do better than others, some things you can't do as well. So accentuate the positive."
- Chet Atkins (June 20, 1924 - June 30, 2001) Mister Guitar in Zen Guitar

"It takes a lot of devotion and work, or maybe I should say play, because if you love it, that's what it amounts to I haven't found any shortcuts, and I've been looking for a long time."
- Chet Atkins (June 20, 1924 - June 30, 2001) Mister Guitar in Zen Guitar

"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

"I been doing the same things as in my younger days, when I was coming up, and now here I am, an old man, up there in the charts. And I say, well, what happened? Have they just thought up the real John Lee Hooker, is that it? And I think, well, I won't tell nobody else! I can't help but wonder what happened."
- John Lee Hooker (1917-2001)

"I improvised, crazed by the music. . . . Even my teeth and eyes burned with fever. Each time I leaped I seemed to touch the sky and when I regained earth it seemed to be mine alone."
- Josephine Baker (1906-1975) French dancer

"The trouble with real life is that there's no danger music."
- Unknown

"It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself."
- J.S. Bach

"Most of us go to our grave with our music still inside of us."
- Unknown

"There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats."
- Albert Schweitzer (01/14/1875-1965)

"Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent."
- Victor Hugo

"Where words fail, music speaks."
- Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) Danish short-story writer, poet

"Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness."
- Maya Angelou

"All the sounds of the earth are like music."
- Oscar Hammerstein (1895-1960)

"It had never occurred to me before that music and thinking are so much alike. In fact you could say music is another way of thinking, or maybe thinking is another kind of music."
- Ursula K. Le Guin

"In music one must think with the heart and feel with the brain."
- George Szell

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

-William Congreve

 

"Music heard so deeply that it is not heard at all, but you are the music while the music lasts."

-Thomas Eliot

 

"Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts -- as the one which, more than any other, ministers to human welfare."

-Herbert Spencer

 

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

-George Bernard Shaw

 

"Caught in that sensual music all neglect momuments of unaging intellect."

-William Butler Yeats

 

"This music crept by me upon the waters, allaying both their fury, and my passion, with its sweet air."

-William Shakespeare

 

"How sour sweet music is when time is broke and no proportion kept! So is it in the music of men's lives."

-William Shakespeare

 

"Music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf."

-Benedict Spinoza

 

"The music in my heart I bore long after it was heard no more."

-William Wordsworth

 

"One good thing about music...when it hits you feel no pain...so hit me with music"

-BOB MARLEY

 

"Music is the universal language of mankind -- poetry their universal pastime and delight."

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow  

Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.

               - Voltaire

I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.

            - Elvis Presley

A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.

     - Sir Thomas Beecham

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking,

'Is there a meaning to music?' My answer would be, 'Yes.'

And 'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?'

My answer to that would be, 'No.'

               -Aaron Copland

What passions cannot music raise or quell?

               -John Driden

An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the

William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger.

               -Dan Rather

I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth

get cleaner?

               -Frank Zappa (in response to Tipper Gore's

                               allegations that music incites people or influences

               their behavior in general)

Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have

hear below.

        - Joseph Addison

The soul of music slumbers in the shell

Till waked and kindled by the master's spell;

And feeling hearts, touch them but rightly, pour

A thousand melodies unheard before!

        - Samuel Rogers

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is

impossible to be silent.

        - Victor Hugo

Yes; as the music changes, Like a prismatic glass; It takes the light

and ranges Through all the moods that pass.

        - Alfred Noyes

If music be the food of love, play on.

        - Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

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

        - Berthold Auerbach