Music Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Music has given me peace. I can remember occasions when music instantly tranquillized my
mind, when I was greatly agitated over something. Music has helped me to overcome anger.

"I saw her, in the fire, but now. I hear her in music, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night," returned the haunted man.

Charles Dickens

Music, drawing, books, invention & exercise will be so many resources to you against ennui.

Thomas Jefferson

A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made. Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

Henry David Thoreau

Not to sink under being man and wife,
But get some color and music out of life?

Let a man be stimulated by poetry, established by the rules of propriety, and perfected by music.

Music oft hath such a charm
To make bad good, and good provoke to harm.

William Shakespeare

Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.

Music for entertainment... seems to complement the reduction of people to silence, the dying out of speech as expression, the inability to communicate at all. It inhabits the pockets of silence that develop between people molded by anxiety, work and undemanding docility.

Theodor W. Adorno

For words are wearisome and worn, while the arabesques of music are forever new.

How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night,
Like softest music to attending ears!

William Shakespeare

Never had the sky been more studded with stars and more charming, the trees more trembling, the odor of the grass more penetrating; never had the birds fallen asleep among the leaves with a sweeter noise; never had all the harmonies of universal serenity responded more thoroughly to the inward music of love; never had Marius been more captivated, more happy, more ecstatic.

'Don't you worry, and don't you hurry.' I know that phrase by heart, and if all other music should perish out of the world it would still sing to me.

The sea is like music. It has all the dreams of the soul within itself and sounds them over.

There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium's capital had gather'd then
Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men.
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage bell.
But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!

Your body is the harp of your soul and it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds.

This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury, and my passion,
With its sweet air.

William Shakespeare

We often feel sad in the presence of music without words; and often more than that in the presence of music without music.

The loss of these tastes [for poetry and music] is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man's morning work in this world?

Henry David Thoreau

He appeared to enjoy beyond everything the sound of his own voice. I couldn't wonder at that, for it was mellow and full and gave great importance to every word he uttered. He listened to himself with obvious satisfaction and sometimes gently beat time to his own music with his head or rounded a sentence with his hand.

Charles Dickens

Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul

There's music in the sighing of a reed; There's music in the gushing of a rill; There's music in all things, if men had ears; The earth is but the music of the spheres.

Still, there is a calm, pure harmony, and music inside of me.

Vincent van Gogh