Song Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years, and I still don't know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song.

Rainer Maria Rilke

A song is no song unless the circumstance is free and fine. If a singer sing from a sense of duty or from seeing no way to escape,I had rather have none. Those only can sleep who do not care to sleep; and those only write or speak best who do not too much respect the writing or the speaking.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

How shall I hold on to my soul, so that
it does not touch yours? How shall I lift
it gently up over you on to other things?
I would so very much like to tuck it away
among long lost objects in the dark,
in some quiet, unknown place, somewhere
which remains motionless when your depths resound.
And yet everything which touches us, you and me,
takes us together like a single bow,
drawing out from two strings but one voice.
On which instrument are we strung?
And which violinist holds us in his hand?
O sweetest of songs.

Rainer Maria Rilke

It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear, but rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.

We think we understand a song's lyrics but what makes us believe in them, or not, is the music

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs.

I can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs.

William Shakespeare

Me too the Muses made write verse. I have songs of my own, the shepherds call me also a poet; but I'm not inclined to trust them. For I don't seem yet to write things as good either as Varius or as Cinna, but to be a goose honking amongst tuneful swans.

The curious beauty of African music is that it uplifts even as it tells a sad tale. You may be poor, you may have only a ramshackle house, you may have lost your job, but that song gives you hope.

Within a few years a simple and inexpensive device, readily carried about, will enable one to receive on land or sea the principal news, to hear a speech, a lecture, a song or play of a musical instrument, conveyed from any other region of the globe. The invention will also meet the crying need for cheap transmission to great distances, more especially over the oceans. The small working capacity of the cables and the excessive cost of messages are now fatal impediments in the dissemination of intelligence which can only be removed by transmission without wires.

Help them to learn songs of joy, instead of burn, baby, burn.

United States! the ages plead, —
Present and Past in under-song, —
Go put your creed into your deed,
Nor speak with double tongue.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

Henry David Thoreau

May your heart always be joyful. May your song always be sung.

I stopped my song and almost heart,
For any eye is an evil eye
That looks in onto a mood apart.

With your silhouette when the sunlight dims Into your eyes where the moonlight swims, And your match-book songs and your gypsy hymns, Who among them would try to impress you? -Bob Dylan, "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands

A message came from my youth of vanished days, saying, 'I wait for you among the quivering of unborn May, where smiles ripen for tears and hours ache with songs unsung.' It says, 'Come to me across the worn-out track of age, through the gates of death. For dreams fade, hopes fail, the fathered fruits of the year decay, but I am the eternal truth, and you shall meet me again and again in your voyage of life from shore to shore.

Rabindranath Tagore

What else can I do, a lame old man, but sing hymns to God? If I were a nightingale, I would do the nightingale's part; if I were a swan, I would do as a swan. But now I am a rational creature, and I ought to praise God. This is my work. I do it, nor will I desert my post, so long as I am allowed to keep it. And I ask you to join me in this same song.

The Master said, If out of the three hundred songs I had to take one phrase to cover all my teachings, I would say 'Let there be no evil in your thoughts.'

Of all the horrid, hideous notes of woe,
Sadder than owl-songs or the midnight blast,
Is that portentous phrase, 'I told you so.'

Hey! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me.
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.

Once again the songs of the fatherland roared to the heavens along the endless marching columns, and for the last time the Lord's grace smiled on His ungrateful children.

Heaven above was blue, and earth beneath was green; the river glistened like a path of diamonds in the sun; the birds poured forth their songs from the shady trees; the lark soared high above the waving corn; and the deep buzz of insects filled the air.

Charles Dickens

The future, good or ill, was not forgotten, but ceased to have any power over the present. Health and hope grew strong in them, and they were content with each good day as it came, taking pleasure in every meal, and in every word and song.

J. R. R. Tolkien

To sing thy praise, would heaven my breath prolong,
Infusing spirits worthy such a song.