Music Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.
That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion.
Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.

Vincent van Gogh

Except I be by Silvia in the night,
There is no music in the nightingale.

William Shakespeare

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music; sweep streets so well that all the host of Heaven and earth will have to pause and say, "Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I believe that the trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades, and that it has no real value…However, let it go. It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden.

The setting sun, and music at the close,
As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,
Writ in remembrance more than things long past.

William Shakespeare

If we are going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things — praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts — not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They might break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

Literature, at least good literature, is science tempered with the blood of art. Like architecture or music.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

"And now let us play our reeds together."
And they played together.
And their music smote heaven and earth, and a terror struck all living things.
I heard the bellow of beasts and the hunger of the forest. And I heard the cry of lonely men, and the plaint of those who long for what they know not.
I heard the sighing of the maiden for her lover, and the panting of the luckless hunter for his prey.
And then there came peace into their music, and the heavens and the earth sang together.
All this I saw in my dream, and all this I heard.

Daylight, full of small dancing particles and the one great turning, our souls are dancing with you, without feet, they dance. Can you see them when I whisper in your ear? All day and night, music, a quiet, bright reedsong. If it fades, we fade.

Of music:

It is a faithful friend, protector and comforter, and for its sake alone life in this world is worth living. Who knows, perhaps in heaven there will be no music. So let us live on the earth while we still have life!

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

The arts in every field — music, drama, sculpture, painting — we can learn to appreciate and enjoy. We need not be artists, but we should be able to appreciate the work of artists.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Rock and roll is a music, and why should a music contribute to … juvenile delinquency? If people are going to be juvenile delinquents, they're going to be delinquents if they hear … Mother Goose rhymes.

Next to the Word of God, music deserves the highest praise. The gift of language combined with the gift of song was given to man that he should proclaim the Word of God through Music.

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.

William Shakespeare

Imperceptibly the love of these discords grew upon me as my love of music grew stronger.

Edgar Allan Poe

I was looking for a name like the Crickets that meant two things, and from crickets I got to beetles. And I changed [to] B E A because … B E E T L E S didn't mean two things, so I changed … the E to an A. And it meant two things then. … When you said it, people thought of crawly things; and when you read it, it was beat music.

A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence. Or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, "Huh. It works. It makes sense." That doesn't happen often, of course, but it happens.

The public want actresses, because they think all actresses bad. They don't want music or poetry because they know that both are good. So actors and actresses thrive and poets and composers starve.

George Bernard Shaw

It is piracy, not overt online music stores, which is our main competitor.

Music...is the vapor of art. It is to poetry what revery is to thought, what the fluid is to the liquid, what the ocean of clouds is to the ocean of waves.

My music will go on forever. Maybe it's a fool say that, but when me know facts me can say facts. My music will go on forever.

I've gone from having a huge fan base to losing a huge fan base to having a kind of fluctuating fan base. I've always had a core of fans who've stuck by me but, depending on the kind of music I do, I end up appealing to certain groups of people and alienating others.

The music of all creatures has to do with their loves, even of toads and frogs. Is it not the same with man?

Henry David Thoreau

Split the lark—and you'll find the music—
Bulb after bulb, in silver rolled—
Scantily dealt to the summer morning
Saved for your ear when lutes be old.

Emily Dickinson

Take a music-bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water-bath is to the body.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.