Music Quotes

Did you notice the random musical quotes at the top of each page? If you want to read them all (or most of them) - you can either refresh your pages or read them here! All quotes are related to music; they either talk about music or important musicians said them. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed gathering them for you!



“It is our firm conviction that mankind will live the happier when it has learned to live with music more worthily. Whoever works to promote this end, in one way or another, has not lived in vain.”
~ Zoltán Kodály


“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, in Götzen-Dämmerung (Twilight of the Idols)


“When griping grief the heart doth wound,
And doleful dumps the mind opresses,
Then music, with her silver sound,
With speedy help doth lend redress.”
~ William Shakespeare


“Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one’s nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.”
~ Oscar Wilde


“If a thing isn’t worth saying, you sing it.”
~ Pierre Beaumarchais


“If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.”
~ Gustav Mahler


“There are two means of refuge from the misery of life - music and cats.”
~ Albert Schweitzer


“There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.”
~ George Eliot


“If you put together all the ingredients that naturally attract children - sex, violence, revenge, spectacle and vigorous noise - what you have is grand opera.”
~ Judith Martin


“I can’t listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.”
~ Woody Allen


“Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression.”
~ Georgia O’Keeffe


“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.”
~ Plato


“Let us describe the education of our men. What then is the education to be? Perhaps we could hardly find a better than that which the experience of the past has already discovered, which consists, I believe, in gymnastic, for the body, and music for the mind.”
~ Plato


“Philosophy is the highest music.”
~ Plato


“What we play is life.”
~ Louis Armstrong


“Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.”
~ Groucho Marx


“Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don’t listen, and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.”
~ Oscar Wilde


“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
~ Aldous Huxley


“Among all men on the earth bards have a share of honor and reverence, because the muse has taught them songs and loves the race of bards.”
~ Homer


“Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.”
~ Samuel Butler


“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


“When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.”
~ Henry David Thoreau


“Opera in English is, in the main, about as sensible as baseball in Italian.”
~ H. L. (Henry Louis) Mencken


“Music is essentially useless, as life is.”
~ George Santayana


“Musical people always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be perfectly deaf.”
~ Oscar Wilde


“Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.”
~ Robert Fripp


“I didn’t realize our songs were so good until Ella sang them.”
~ Ira Gershwin


“Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.”
~ Ella Fitzgerald


“The only thing better than singing is more singing.”

~ Ella Fitzgerald


“The voice is an instrument that you really must take time to develop. It’s like a good red wine. Give it time.”
~ Cecilia Bartoli


“The voice will guide you-will tell you what to do. In order to do that, you must be quite sensitive with the instrument and accept this daily conversation with your voice.”
~ Cecilia Bartoli


“Music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music.”
~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart


“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”
~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart


“I pay no attention whatever to anybody’s praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.”
~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart


“If we were all determined to play the first violin we should never have an ensemble. Therefore, respect every musician in his proper place.”
~ Robert A. Schumann


“For me, music is always the language which permits one to converse with the Beyond.”
~ Robert A. Schumann


“The study of the history of music and the hearing of masterworks of different epochs will quickly cure you of vanity and self-adoration.”
~ Robert A. Schumann


“To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts - such is the duty of the artist.”
~ Robert A. Schumann


“Rossini would have been a great composer if his teacher had spanked him enough on the backside.”
~ Ludwig van Beethoven


“Opera once was an important social instrument - especially in Italy. With Rossini and Verdi people were listening to opera together and having the same catharsis with the same story, the same moral dilemmas. They were holding hands in the darkness. That has gone. Now perhaps they are holding hands watching television.”
~ Luciano Berio


“Music is everything one listens to with the intention of listening to music.”
~ Luciano Berio


“Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind.”
~ Gioacchino Rossini


“One can’t judge Wagner’s opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don’t intend to hear it a second time.”
~ Gioacchino Rossini


“You might lose your spontaneity and, instead of composing first-rate Gershwin, end up with second rate Ravel.”
~ Maurice Ravel


“Life is a lot like jazz... it’s best when you improvise.”
~ George Gershwin


“A song without music is a lot like H2 without the O.”
~ Ira Gershwin


“I liked the bit about quarter to eleven.”
~ Erik Satie (on Debussy’s ‘Dawn to Noon on the Sea’)


“The musician is perhaps the most modest of animals, but he is also the proudest. It is he who invented the sublime art of ruining poetry.”
~ Erik Satie


“Why attack God? He may be as miserable as we are.”
~ Erik Satie


“My heyday is over, and another must take my place. The world wants something new. Others have ceded their places to us and we must cede ours to still others... I am more than happy to give mine to people of talent like Verdi.”
~ Gaetano Donizetti


“Art is a kind of illness.”
~ Giacomo Puccini


“It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.”
~ Albert Einstein


“Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.”
~ Ludwig van Beethoven


“Applaud friends, the comedy is over.”
~ Ludwig van Beethoven (said as he was dying)


“Only the pure in heart can make a good soup.”
~ Ludwig van Beethoven


“To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.”
~ Leonard Bernstein


“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”
~ Leonard Bernstein


“In the olden days, everybody sang. You were expected to sing as well as talk. It was a mark of the cultured man to sing. To know music.”
~ Leonard Bernstein


“Life without music is unthinkable. Music without life is academic. That is why my contact with music is a total embrace.”
~ Leonard Bernstein


“Sometimes when I sit own to practice and there is no one else in the room, I have to stifle an impulse to ring for the elevator man and offer him money to come in and hear me.”
~ Arthur Rubinstein


“Most people ask for happiness on condition. Happiness can only be felt if you don’t set any condition.”
~ Arthur Rubinstein


“Life is the game that must be played, this truth at least, good friends, we know; so live and laugh, nor be dismayed as one by one the phantoms go.”
~ Arthur Rubinstein


“Never sound pompous. You always sound noble, noble. Absolute character of music is nobility. Even popular music can be noble, you see. If it’s not noble, then it’s not very good... Music is an art of emotion, of nobility, of dignity, of greatness, of love, of tenderness. All that must be brought out in music but never a show of pompousness.”
~ Arthur Rubinstein, during master class on Chopin’s First Ballade


“An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I’ve left the opera house.”
~ Maria Callas


“I don’t need the money, dear. I work for art.”
~ Maria Callas


“That is the difference between good teachers and great teachers: good teachers make the best of a pupil’s means; great teachers foresee a pupil’s ends.”
~ Maria Callas


“I would like to be Maria, but there is La Callas who demands that I carry myself with her dignity.”
~ Maria Callas


“My poor sight gives me an advantage. I can’t see the people in the audience who are scratching their heads while I am lost in my role and giving everything I have to the drama.”
~ Maria Callas


“I prepare myself for rehearsals like I would for marriage.”
~ Maria Callas


“When music fails to agree to the ear, to soothe the ear and the heart and the senses, then it has missed the point.”
~ Maria Callas


“I don’t want to be somebody who stands still and sings pretty. Each song is a world. Each song is a story. I don’t achieve nearly what I want.”
~ Renée Fleming


“When you go out onto the stage, all the preparation has to be forced into your subconscious. For the moment of the performance, we all have to return to a new level of unconsciousness. All the reflection and all the doubts have to be laid aside before you start.”
~ Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau


“It is desirable that people make music on the breath, with the breath.”
~ Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau


“The future? Like unwritten books and unborn children, you don’t talk about it.”
~ Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau


“The work is the most important thing.”
~ Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau


“Some critics have written that I wanted to teach through singing. Not at all. I was learning! I went to school every time I gave a song recital.”
~ Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau


“...in my lieder concerts, I always strove, when possible, to sing only the works of a single composer, so that the audience could be gradually drawn into a particular creative genius’ way of thinking, and could follow him.”
~ Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau


“It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness and of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature, and everlasting beauty of monotony.”
~ Benjamin Britten


“The old idea of a composer suddenly having a terrific idea and sitting up all night to write it is nonsense. Nighttime is for sleeping.”
~ Benjamin Britten


“Composing is like driving down a foggy road toward a house. Slowly you see more details of the house-the color of the slates and bricks, the shape of the windows. The notes are the bricks and the mortar of the house.”
~ Benjamin Britten


“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.”
~ Maya Angelou


“When a singer truly feels and experiences what the music is all about, the words will automatically ring true.”
~ Monserrat Caballé


“Drama if I sing, drama if I don’t sing. What do you do?”
~ Monserrat Caballé


“I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven.”
~ Jascha Heifetz


“There is no top. There are always further heights to reach.”
~ Jascha Heifetz


“If I don’t practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it.”
~ Jascha Heifetz


“No matter what side of an argument you’re on, you always find some people on your side that wish you were on the other side.”
~ Jascha Heifetz


“If the Almighty himself played the violin, the credits would still read ‘Rubinstein, God, and Piatigorsky’, in that order.”
~ Jascha Heifetz


“It may be that when the angels go about their task of praising God, they play only Bach. I am sure, however, that when they are together en famille they play Mozart and that then too our dear Lord listens with special pleasure.”
~ Karl Barth


“If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves...”
~ W. H. Auden


“A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.”
~ W. H. Auden


“No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.”
~ W. H. Auden


“People think the Beatles know what’s going on. We don’t. We’re just doing it.”
~ John Lennon


“If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling. No two people on earth are alike, and it’s got to be that way in music or it isn’t music.”
~ Billie Holiday


“I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. If you can, then it ain’t music, it’s close-order drill or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.”
~ Billie Holiday


“I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know.”
~ Billie Holiday


“I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.”
~ George Eliot


“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”
~ John Cage


“If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.”
~ John Cage


“Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.”
~ Marcel Marceau


“The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, ‘Is there a meaning to music?’ My answer would be, ‘Yes.’ And ‘Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?’ My answer to that would be, ‘No.’”
~ Aaron Copland


“Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for forty-five minutes.”
~ Aaron Copland


“Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness - I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.”
~ Aaron Copland


“There is something about music that keeps its distance even at the moment that it engulfs us. It is at the same time outside and away from us and inside and part of us. In one sense it dwarfs us, and in another we master it. We are led on and on, and yet in some strange way we never lose control.”
~ Aaron Copland


“When I speak of the gifted listener, I am thinking of the nonmusician primarily, of the listener who intends to retain his amateur status. It is the thought of just such a listener that excites the composer in me.”
~ Aaron Copland


“I never use a score when conducting my orchestra. Does a lion tamer enter a cage with a book on how to tame a lion?”
~ Dimitri Mitropoulos


“If you can walk you can dance. If you can talk you can sing.”
~ Zimbabwe Proverb


“Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.”
~ Igor Stravinsky


“A good composer does not imitate; he steals.”
~ Igor Stravinsky


“My music is best understood by children and animals.”
~ Igor Stravinsky


“You may not be aware of this but Leonard Bernstein won another award, for explaining the music of Igor Stravinsky... to Igor Stravinsky!”
~ Victor Borge


“And now, in honour of the 150th anniversary of Beethoven’s death, I would like to play ‘Clear the Saloon’, er, ‘Clair de Lune’, by Debussy. I don’t play Beethoven so well, but I play Debussy very badly, and Beethoven would have liked that.”
~ Victor Borge


“There are three Bachs. Johann, Sebastian and Offen.”
~ Victor Borge


“It’s your language, I’m just trying to use it...”
~ Victor Borge


“Occasionally, a finger comes up to wipe a tear [of laughter] from the eye... and that’s my reward... the rest goes to the government.”
~ Victor Borge


“All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff”
~ Frank Zappa


“Music is everybody’s possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it.”
~ John Lennon


“You don't need any brains to listen to music.”
~ Luciano Pavarotti


“We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about but try to be yourself while you're doing so.”
~ B. B. King


“I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.”
~ Elvis Presley


“Music is spiritual. The music business is not.”
~ Van Morrison


“It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.”
~ Albert Einstein (When asked about his theory of relativity)


“I think music in itself is healing. It’s an explosive expression of humanity. It’s something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we’re from, everyone loves music.”
~ Billy Joel


“Music is the vernacular of the human soul.”
~ Geoffrey Latham


“The greatest source of inspiration is hard work. Of course, I also believe in inspiration itself, but sometimes you have to provoke it, call on it repeatedly, even though it may take a while.”
~ Joaquin Rodrigo


“There are times when I feel uninspired and I don’t want to compose. I call these my ‘bewitched’ periods. I have to be touched with a magic wand.”
~ Joaquin Rodrigo


“Blindness enhanced my spiritual life.”
~ Joaquin Rodrigo


“Claude Debussy defined the guitar as an expressive harpsicord. I believe that is the best definition ever given of the Spanish guitar. This phrase is the starting point for my Concierto de Aranjuez/ Our guitar is the only survivor of the rich and anarchic instrumental wildlife of the Middle Ages.”
~ Joaquin Rodrigo


“We’re blues people. And blues never lets tragedy have the last word.”
~ Wynton Marsalis


“Music is an extraordinary locksmith; it is so competent that it can open our soul’s door even with closed eyes!”
~ Mehmet ildan


“We get nearer to the Lord through music than perhaps through any other thing except prayer.”
~ J. Reuben Clark


“Ahh... music, a magic far beyond all we do here.”
~ Albus Dumbledore (from Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling)


“For those of you seeking immortality, forget politics. Support the arts instead.”
~ Dr. Ruth Griffioen


“Music is the chalk to the blackboard of life. Without it, everything is a blank slate.”
~ Lexi Carter


“Playing the blues is like having to be black twice - Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed.”
~ B.B. King


“There is only one better thing than music - live music.”
~ Jacek Bukowski


“Thanks to great singers, music has acquired a human voice.”
~ Leonid S. Sukhorukov


“The most important thing to me as a songwriter is the breath. The most important thing I could say to somebody is, ‘Sometimes I just breathe you in’.”
~ Tori Amos


“Most people die with their music still locked up inside them.”
~ Benjamin Disraeli


“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”
~ Victor Hugo


“Musicians are the architects of heaven.”
~ Bobby McFerrin


“Music is a discipline, and a mistress of order and good manners, she makes the people milder and gentler, more moral and more reasonable.”
~ Martin Luther


“My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.”
~ Martin Luther


“Music, like religion, unconditionally brings in its train all the moral virtues to the heart it enters, even though that heart is not in the least worthy.”
~ Jean-Baptiste Montégut


“Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.”
~ G. K. Chesterton


“Those who are affected by music can be divided into two classes: those who hear the spiritual meaning, and those who hear the material sound. There are good and evil results in each case.”
~ Anonymous


“When we are touched by a song, it is because the artist cannot hide himself.”
~ Leonard Cohen


“Assassins!”
~ Arturo Toscanini to his orchestra


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