Quotes about music

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“Any piece of good music is in essence a love song.”

“Color is all. When color is right, form is right. Color is everything, color is vibration like music; everything is vibration.”

“Instead of singing in the shower, I would write out the lyrics of my favourite songs, the ink would turn the water blue or red or green, and the music would run down my legs.”

“Real understanding does not come from what we learn in books; it comes from what we learn from love of nature, of music, of man. For only what is learned in that way is truly understood.”

“Colour is the touch of the eye,
Music to the deaf,
A word out of darkness.”

“Music, of all the arts, stands in a special region, unlit by any star but its own, and utterly without meaning… except its own.”

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

“My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. My pleasures are the most intense known to man: writing and butterfly hunting.”

“See the music, hear the dance.”

“Dont speak of tomorrow. Let the music speak to us tonight, in a happier language than ours.”

“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.”

“There are millions of chords. There are millions of numbers. And everyone forgets the one that is a zero. But without the zero, numbers are just arithmetic. Without the empty chord, music is just noise.”

“Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.”

“The rock and roll business is pretty absurd, but the world of serious music is much worse.”

“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”

“… All the shops have been smashed open. There was a whole bunch of people across the street helping themselves to musical instruments, can you believe that?"

"Yeah," said Rincewind. "… Luters, I expect.”

“Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight.”

“If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.”

“This Voyager spacecraft was constructed by the United States of America. We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization.

We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some--perhaps many--may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:

This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe”

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”

“Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.”

“Lady Madonna lying on the bed
Listen to the music playing in your head.”

“It appeared that nobody ever said a thing they meant, or ever talked of a feeling they felt, but that was what music was for.”

“Keep time! How sour sweet music is when time is broke and no proportion kept! So is it in the music of men's lives. I wasted time and now doth time waste me.”

“You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”

“Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die.”

“You must always believe that life is as extraordinary as music says it is.”

“I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.”

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

“But here there was only hot swing music and liquor, dance halls, ban, and movies, and sex that hung in the gloom like a chandelier and flooded the world with brief, deceptive rainbows.”

“There is no such thing as happy music.”

“First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air.”

“I am the maker of music, the dreamer of dreams!”

“I think the most important thing about music is the sense of escape.”

“It's impossible for me to say one word about all that music has meant to me in my life. How, then, can I hope to be understood?”

“Why am I afraid to dance, I who love music and rhythm and grace and song and laughter? Why am I afraid to live, I who love life and the beauty of flesh and the living colors of the earth and sky and sea? Why am I afraid to love, I who love love?”

“Music is everybody's business. It's only the publishers who think people own it”

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

“Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed; an architectural one, where it is constructed; and finally, a textile one, where it is woven.”

“Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.”

“But this didn'tlike magic. It felt a lot older than that. It felt like music.”

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

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

“My day is done, and I am like a boat drawn on the beach, listening to the dance-music of the tide in the evening.”

“Tax not so bad a voice to slander music any more than once.”

“Every disease is a musical problem; every cure is a musical solution.”

“Nietzsche said without music, life would be a mistake. To me, without books, life would be a mistake.”

“It is my soul that calls upon my name;
How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night,
like softest music to attending ears!
-Romeo”

“In music the passions enjoy themselves.”

“She thought to herself, "This is now." She was glad that the cozy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.”

“It is quite impossible these days to assume anything about people's educational level from the way they talk or dress or from their taste in music. Safest to treat everyone you meet as a distinguished intellectual.”

“I feel so intensely the delights of shutting oneself up in a little world of one’s own, with pictures and music and everything beautiful.”

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

“What's the earth
With all its art, verse, music, worth —
Compared with love, found, gained, and kept?”

“Life is one grand sweet song so start the music”

“Because some stories end, but old stories go on, and you gotta dance to the music if you want to stay ahead”

“Only sick music makes money today.”

“Ah, that shows you the power of music, that magician of magician, who lifts his wand and says his mysterious word and all things real pass away and the phantoms of your mind walk before you clothed in flesh.”

“If, while at the piano, you attempt to form little melodies, that is very well; but if they come into your mind of themselves, when you are not practising, you may be still more pleased; for the internal organ of music is then roused in you. The fingers must do what the head desires; not the contrary.”

“If one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.”

“I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.”

“Let's buy books so as not to read them; let's go to concerts without caring to hear the music or see who's there; let's take long walks because we're sick of walking; and let's spend whole days in the country, just because it bores us.”

“I sit, I read, I listen to music, I go or a walk, I ride to Prospect Park and sit under the Willow Tree, I remember, I forget, I look at pictures, I do, I do, I do… or I don't, but its peaceful… only me… no worries.”

“Come oh come ye tea-thirsty restless ones -- the kettle boils, bubbles and sings, musically.”

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

“Music is only love looking for words.”

“Music is love in search of a word.”

“the only escape from the miseries of life are music and cats…”

“Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit, and never dies.”

“Music and comedy are so linked. The rhythm of comedy is con­nected to the rhythm of music. They’re both about creating tension and knowing when to let it go. I’m always surprised when somebody funny is not musical.”

“He thought what a fine thing it was that people made music all over the world, even in the strangest settings – probably even on polar expeditions.”

“Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart..”

“If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I'll say it.”

“Without music and dance, life is a journey through a desert.”

“Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memories.”

“When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.”

“To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.”

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

“Music is an addiction.”

“If you learn music you'll learn most all there is to know.”

“Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.”

“yeah me see myself as a revolutionary, would wouldn't want no help and imma take no bribe from no one and fight it single handed with music”

“Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.”

“Music not only saved my life, it gave me a life”

“If you were music, I would listen to you ceaselessly, and my low spirits would brighten up.”

“… the "Mind of God," which Einstein wrote eloquently about, is cosmic music resonating throughout hyperspace.”

“I found my God in music and the arts, with writers like Hermann Hesse, and musicians like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Little Walter. In some way, in some form, my God was always there, but now I have learned to talk to him.”

“O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?”

“It was sad music. But it waved its sadness like a battle flag. It said the universe had done all it could, but you were still alive.”

“Nature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her fragrance, and her sunlight from before human cruelty or suffering.”

“I can't listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid nice things and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell.”

“An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.”

“Sometimes words need music too. Sometimes the descriptions are not enough. Books should be written with soundtracks, like films.”

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”

“The time is past when music was written for a handful of aesthetes. Today vast crowds of people have come face to face with serious music and are waiting with eager impatience. Composers, take heed of this…But this does not mean that you must pander to this audience. Pandering always has an element of insincerity about it and nothing good ever came of that.”

“Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?
Are the people inside the school musical and the ones outside unmusical?”

“Hans Castorp loved music from his heart; it worked upon him much the same way as did his breakfast porter, with deeply soothing, narcotic effect, tempting him to doze.”

“I get all these loser preps coming up to me asking for autographs and all this crap, and I really want to tell them, 'My music is not for people like you!”

“I cannot imagine a world without music. It would be... well, I cannot imagine it.”