Quotes about music page 8
“Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.”
Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian
Post-Prime Ministerial
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) German late baroque era composer
Variant: There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet
Music, When Soft Voices Die http://www.readprint.com/work-1367/Percy-Bysshe-Shelley (1821) <br class="br">Source: The Complete Poems
Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet
"Love the Wild Swan" (1935)
Context: This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game.
Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast
Better mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.
Does it matter whether you hate your... self?
At least Love your eyes that can see, your mind that can
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.
Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923–2014) writer
Source: Mr Wrong
“You know things have gone bad when military marches pass for pop music.”
James Patterson (1947) American author
Source: Witch & Wizard
“She poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)
"The Birthmark" from Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)
“The Harmonica is the world’s best-selling musical instrument. You’re welcome.”
Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist
“It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.”
Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) American journalist
A Preface to Morals (1929)
“Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica
“There is geometry in the humming of the strings. There is music in the spacings of the spheres.”
Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher
As quoted in the preface of the book entitled Music of the Spheres by Guy Murchie (1961)
The Golden Verses
“Music is what I always turn to when I'm feeling a certain way. It's my reason for everything.”
Josh Groban (1981) American musician and actor
Inside Connection, February 2004
Variant: I can only say so much about how I feel. Music is what I always turned to when I was feeling a certain way. It's been my reason for everything.
“The history of music is mortal, but the idiocy of the guitar is eternal.”
Milan Kundera book The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Source: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Brian Andreas (1956) American artist
Source: Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas
E. Lockhart (1967) American writer of novels as E. Lockhart (mainly for teenage girls) and of picture books under real name Emily J…
Source: Dramarama
“Turn the goddam music up! My heart feels like an alligator!”
Hunter S. Thompson book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Source: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
“There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.”
George Eliot book The Mill on the Floss
The Mill on the Floss (1860)
“Dancing is music made visible.”
George Balanchine (1904–1983) Georgian choreographer, dancer and ballet master (1904-1983)
“Music is an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible delights of the soul.”
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) German late baroque era composer
Alison Croggon (1962) contemporary Australian poet, playwright and fantasy novelist
Source: The Naming
“Their words, like the music, had the potential to be endless.”
Sarah Dessen book Keeping the Moon
Source: Keeping the Moon
“After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer
"The Rest is Silence"
Source: Music at Night and Other Essays (1931)
“But all the time-no matter what she was doing-there was music.”
Carson McCullers (1917–1967) American writer
Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted
Source: Girl, Interrupted (1994)
Context: I've gone back to the Frick since then to look at her and at the two other Vermeers. Vermeers, after all, are hard to come by, and the one in Boston has been stolen. The other two are self-contained paintings. The people in them are looking at each other -- the lady and her maid, the soldier and his sweetheart. Seeing them is peeking at them through a hole in a wall. And the wall is made of light -- that entirely credible yet unreal Vermeer light. Light like this does not exist, but we wish it did. We wish the sun could make us young and beauitful, we wish our clothes could glisten and ripple against our skins, most of all, we wish that everyone we knew could be brightened simply by our looking at them, as are the maid with the letter and the soldier with the hat. The girl at her music sits in another sort of light, the fitful, overcast light of life, by which we see ourselves and others only imperfectly, and seldom.
“And sometimes even music
Cannot substitute for tears.”
Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer
The Cool, Cool River
Song lyrics, The Rhythm of the Saints (1990)
“You can’t change the music of your soul.
—In Esquire, 1967”
Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) film, stage, and television actress
“Most people go to their grave with their music inside them.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright
“Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.”
John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet
Arcades (1630-1634), line 68
Source: The Complete Poetry
“Good music always defeats bad luck.”
Jack Vance (1916–2013) American mystery and speculative fiction writer
“Music is everywhere. It’s in the air between us, waiting to be sung.”
David Levithan (1972) American author and editor
Source: How They Met, and Other Stories
“The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica
The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
Context: The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body. Always an orchestra, and just as music traverses walls, so sensuality traverses the body and reaches up to ecstasy.
“The secret is not to make your music louder, but to make the world quieter.”
Mitch Albom (1958) American author
Source: The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto: A Novel
“You,” I said, “are sweet music in a distant room.”
Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear
Source: The Wise Man's Fear
Boris Vian (1920–1959) French polymath: writer, poet, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor and engineer
John Muir book My First Summer in the Sierra
Terry Gifford, EWDB, pages 243-244
Source: 1860s, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1869
Alice Walker book In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose
Source: In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose
“It's not the words but the music that counts.”
Benjamin Spock (1903–1998) American pediatrician and author of Baby and Child Care
“In memory, everything seems to happen to music.”
Jenny Han book P.S. I Still Love You
Source: P.S. I Still Love You
“You do not know the first note of the music that moves me.”
Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind
Source: The Name of the Wind
Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois
Walden (1854)
Context: A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made. Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.<!--pp.366-367
Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"
Source: The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–82