Composer Quotes

Poetry and painting have arrived to their perfection in our own country; music is yet but in its nonage [immaturity], a forward Child, which gives hope of what it may be hereafter in England, when the masters of it shall find more Encouragement.

It appears to me that they who in proof of any assertion rely simply on the weight of authority, without adducing any argument in support of it, act very absurdly. I, on the contrary, wish to be allowed freely to question and freely to answer you without any sort of adulation, as well becomes those who are in search of truth.

Vincenzo Galilei

Do I love you because you're beautiful, or are you beautiful because I love you?

Richard Rodgers

Style is the dress of thought; a modest dress,
Neat, but not gaudy, will true critics please.

We've got to have
We plot to have
For it's so dreary not to have
That certain thing called the Boy Friend.

Let us, at any rate, give heed to suffer joyfully the crosses that God sends us, because they all, if we are saved, will become for us eternal joys. When infirmities, pains, or any adversities afflict us, let us lift up our eyes to heaven and say, "One day all these pains will have an end, and after them I hope to enjoy God forever."

Alphonsus Maria de' Liguori

Georgia, Georgia, no peace I find,
Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind.

Love is born of faith, lives on hope, and dies of charity.

Gian Carlo Menotti

Autumn in New York Is often mingled with pain. Dreamers with empty hands May sigh for exotic lands; It's Autumn in New York, It's good to live it again.

If you're in jazz and more than ten people like you, you're labelled commercial.

What a terrible revenge by the culture of the Negroes on that of the whites!

Of jazz

Ignacy Jan Paderewski

I'm told that Saint-Saëns has informed a delighted public that since the war began he has composed music for the stage, melodies, an elegy and a piece for the trombone. If he'd been making shell-cases instead it might have been all the better for music.

When discussing a march that he had composed for his regiment:

General: Isn't it a little fast, Korngold? The men can't march to that.
Korngold: Ah yes, well, you see Sir, this was composed for the retreat.

You're a man, and that's a bonus
'Cause when you're swinging your cojones
You'll show 'em what testosterone is.

Every man and woman alive is gifted by God in some special way. People who have a self-image of worth are going to see value in what they do. This is the attitude that motivates them to be and to do their best. It's a drive that comes from within people.

There were birds in the sky, but I never saw them winging, No I never saw them at all, Until there was you.

Meredith Willson

A cook, when I dine, seems to me a divine being, who from the depths of his kitchen rules the human race. One considers him as a minister of heaven, because his kitchen is a temple, in which his ovens are the altar.

Marc-Antoine Madeleine Désaugiers

The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behooves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style c'est l homme, what is likely to happen if l homme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual?

Jazz is about the only form of art existing today in which there is this freedom of the individual without the loss of group contact.

Jazz is the best of all nourishments. It feeds the creative spirit like nothing else can.

When I looked at my own self and my own depression, it was funny. It was very sad, but it was also very funny.

Elizabeth Swados

Too many years fighting back tears. Why can't the past just die? Wishing you were somehow here again, knowing we must say goodbye. Try to forgive, teach me to live, give me the strength to try! No more memories, no more silent tears, no more gazing across the wasted years. Help me say goodbye.

Andrew Lloyd Webber

My boyfriend dumped me. My best friend won't talk to me. My future is in a garbage can. Everything has turned to crap. Can you please just let me be a sullen teenager. just this once

Life is just a bowl of cherries,
Don't take it serious; it's too mysterious.

Silent night! Holy night!
All is calm, all is bright.