Music quotes
3.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside music — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"... Jimmy Page bought a Les Paul because he liked mine, but it was stolen, so he bought a Standard everybody raved about .. that's what he's famous for, but his first Les Paul was a Custom like mine ... I can remember he played a Gretsch before that"
"Since Mozart's day composers have learned the art of making music throatily and palpitatingly sexual."
"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."
"From out the peaceful hollow of its throat / such music pours as I am unaware / how to devise. I did not think these things. / It is the reed that sings."
"... I'm not conscious of the speed ... it's not my motive ... my motive is displaying a voice through the fingerboard ... it can get to the point where I don't have control over what I am playing ... I never end the gig until I can't sing anymore"
"notes fly so much farther than words. There is no other way to reach the infinite."
"Each time my mother went psychotic, I hoped it would be the last time. Afterward she would tell me, 'I think that was the final episode. I think I had a breakthrough.' And I would believe-for a few months-that it was true. That she was back to stay. Maybe it was like having a rock star mother who was always on the road. Were there Benatar children? Did they sit around and wonder if their mom's Hell is for Children tour was going to be her last tour?"
"These magic moments when rhythms and harmonies extend themselves and jell together and the people become another instrument. These things are priceless and they can't be learned; they can only be felt."
"A musician, an artist, an architect: the man or woman who is not one of these is not a Christian."
"Poetry and music I have banished, But the stupidity Of root, shoot, blossom or clay Makes no demand. I bend my body to the spade Or grope with a dirty hand."
"He murmurs near the running brooks A music sweeter than their own."
"Music is the vapor of art. It is to poetry what reverie is to thought, what fluid is to solid, what the ocean of clouds is to the ocean of waves."
"Commercial rock 'n' roll music is a brutalization of the stream of contemporary Negro church music an obscene looting of a cultural expression."
"She's not a saint, and she's not what you think She's an actress, whoa She's better known for the things that she does on the mattress"
"Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition."
"Two touch the string, The harp is dumb."
"In Haydn's oratorios, the notes present to the imagination not only motions, as, of the snake, the stag, and the elephant, but colors also; as the green grass."
"Music and Wine are one."
"The House ...She lays her beams in music, In music everyone, To the cadence of the whirling world Which dances around the sun- That so they shall not be displaced By lapses or by wars, But for the love of happy souls Outlive the newest stars."
"The sweetest music is not in the oratorio, but in the human voice when it speaks from its instant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage."
