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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"Music is the sound of the universal laws promulgated. It is the only assured tone. There are in it such strains as far surpass anyman's faith in the loftiness of his destiny. Things are to be learned which it will be worth the while to learn."
"As polishing expresses the vein in marble, and grain in wood, so music brings out what of heroic lurks anywhere. The hero is the sole patron of music."
"Was awakened in the night to a strain of music dying away, - passing travellers singing. My being was so expanded and infinitely and divinely related for a brief season that I saw how unexhausted, how almost wholly unimproved, was man's capacity for a divine life. When I remembered what a narrow and finite life I should anon awake to!"
"They always want to sell me as a hard bopper."
"I don't find the songs; they find me. I just strum my guitar and wait for a lyric to come."
"To produce music is also in a sense to produce children."
"People tell us they have been inspired by our music to do great things."
"If you want to play somebody's music, you'd better go into his house."
"Music allows the great opportunity to play with people you love."
"I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective."
"I have learned that there lies dormant in the souls of all men a penchant for some particular musical instrument an an unsuspected yearning to play on it, which are bound to wake up an demand attention someday. Therefore you who rail at such that disturb your slumbers with unsuccessful and demoralizing attempts to subjugate a guitar, beware! For sooner or later your own time will come."
"We often feel sad in the presence of music without words; and often more than that in the presence of music without music."
"Music is a good thing; and after all that soul-butter and hogwash, I never see it freshen up things so, and sound so honest and bully."
"I like them old and rich."
"Record company execs eat their young, I swear to God."
"You would never hear any song played twice in the same way. The words were retained, but within a certain frame there was great latitude, and the musician could improvise to his heart's content; and the more the variations and combinations, the greater the musician."
"I want to play music that draws a picture of the world and its space."
"Music is the most important thing. I'm thinking of my future. There has to be something new, and I want to be part of it. I want to lead an orchestra with excellent musicians. I want to play music which draws pictures of the world and its space"
"To blow is not to play on the flute; you must move the fingers. [Ger., Blasen ist nicht floten, ihr musst die Finger bewegen.]"
"The dignity of art probably appears most eminently with music since it does not have any material that needs to be discounted. Music is all form and content and elevates and ennobles everything that it expresses."
