Music Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

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

It seems to me now that mathematics is capable of an artistic excellence as great as that of any music, perhaps greater; not because the pleasure it gives (although very pure) is comparable, either in intensity or in the number of people who feel it, to that of music, but because it gives in absolute perfection that combination, characteristic of great art, of godlike freedom, with the sense of inevitable destiny; because, in fact, it constructs an ideal world where everything is perfect and yet true.

Bertrand Russell

Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music.

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.

We should talk over the lessons of the day, or lose them in Music, Chess, or the merriments of our family companions.

Thomas Jefferson

Let pessimism once take hold of the mind, and life is all topsy-turvy, all vanity and vexation of spirit. There is no cure for individual or social disorder, except in forgetfulness and annihilation. "Let us eat, drink and be merry," says the pessimist, "for tomorrow we die." If I regarded my life from the point of view of the pessimist, I should be undone. I should seek in vain for the light that does not visit my eyes and the music that does not ring in my ears. I should beg night and day and never be satisfied. I should sit apart in awful solitude, a prey to fear and despair. But since I consider it a duty to myself and to others to be happy, I escape a misery worse than any physical deprivation.

Music, verily, is the mediator between the life of the mind and the senses.

Variant translation: Music is indeed the mediator between the spiritual and sensual life.

Ludwig van Beethoven

When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O! it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odor!

William Shakespeare

Give me some music—music, moody food
Of us that trade in love.

William Shakespeare

There exists a passion for comprehension, just as there exists a passion for music. That passion is rather common in children but gets lost in most people later on. Without this passion, there would be neither mathematics nor natural science.

Albert Einstein

I would like to assure those who would serve Daridranarayana that there is music, art, economy and joy in the spinning wheel.

Seated upon the convex mound Of one vast kidney, Jonah prays And sings his canticles and hymns, Making the hollow vault resound God's goodness and mysterious ways, Till the great fish spouts music as he swims.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The late Bill Nye once said "I have been told that Wagner's music is better than it sounds."

Of music Dr Johnson used to say that it was the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Ah, that shows you the power of music, that magician of magician, who lifts his wand and says his mysterious word and all things real pass away and the phantoms of your mind walk before you clothed in flesh.

Too much pleasure disagrees with us. Too many concords are annoying in music; too many benefits irritate us; we wish to have the wherewithal to overpay our debts.

Melody is the essence of music. I compare a good melodist to a fine racer, and counterpoints to hack post-horses.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

[Our] plan is to follow the example of the prophets and the ancient fathers of the church, and to compose psalms...so that the Word of God may be among the people also in the form of music.

Nature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her fragrance, and her sunlight from before human cruelty or suffering.

Do not believe those who try to persuade you that composition is only a cold exercise of the intellect. The only music capable of moving and touching us is that which flows from the depths of a composer's soul when he is stirred by inspiration.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

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.

The author's conviction on this day of New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music; but this must not be taken as implying that all good music is dance music or all poetry lyric. Bach and Mozart are never too far from physical movement.

Tityrus, you who lie under cover of the spreading beech-tree, you are practising your pastoral music on a thin stalk.