music quotes
Music, the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heaven we have below.
Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.
Poetry is music written for the human voice.
Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them.
All music is folk music. I ain't never heard no horse sing a song.
Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn Lent it the music of its trees at dawn?
Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
Generally music feedeth that disposition of the spirits which it findeth. 50
I cannot conceive of music that expresses absolutely nothing.
A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.
The Englishmay not likemusicbuttheyabsolutely love the noise it makes.
Good music isthat whichpenetratesthe ear with facility and quits the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory.
British music is in a state of perpetual promise. It might almost be said to be one long promissory note.
The function of music isto release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.
She was one of the people who say 'I don't know anything about music really, but I know what I like.'
Imustconfessthat I livea miserable life I live entirely in my music.
There may be trouble ahead But while there's moonlight and music and love and romance Let's face the music and dance
Why is Schoenberg's Music so Hard to Understand?
Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain: In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because theyare few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low: Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and mournersgo about the streets: Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.
Do not take up music unless you would rather die than not do so.
The music soars within the little lark, And the lark soars.
Music says nothing to the reason: it is a kind of closely structured nonsense.
Music is the art of sounds in the movement of time.
There was a sound of revelry by night, And Belgium's capital had gathered then Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Foul as their soil, and frigid as their snows. The lamps that shone o'er fair women and brave men; A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, And all went merryas a marriage bell; But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man less, but nature more.
Rose-cheeked Laura, come, Sing thou smoothly with thy beauty's Silent music, either other Sweetly gracing.
Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
The creation of music is just as natural as the air we breathe.I believemusic isreallya freething, and any way you can enjoy it, you should.
Many peopleapparentlydon'ttrusttheir reactionstoart or to music unless there is a verbal explanation for it.In music the only thing that matters is whether you feel it or not.
No voice, but oh! the silence sank Like music on my heart.
O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me What this strong music in the soul may be! What, and wherein it doth exist, This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist, This beautiful and beauty-making power.
Bells, the poor man's only music.
Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
Music alone with sudden charms can bind The wand'ring sense, and calm the troubled mind.
Canned music is like audible wallpaper.
The whole problemcan be statedquitesimply byasking, 'Is there a meaning to music?'Myanswer would be,'Yes'. And 'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?'My answer to that would be 'No'.
Somemusic that Idon'ttaketoinmodernorchestral stuff just seems to be trying to do something with an orchestrathat Jimi Hendrixcould dosomuch better with an electric guitar and a fuzzbox.Why create a hideous sound with violas when they were made to sound melodious and agreeable?
Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.
At eve The moonbeam, sliding softly in between The sleeping leaves, is all the light they wish, Birds warbling all the music.
You that love England, who have an ear for her music, The slow movement of clouds in benediction, Clear arias of light thrilling over her uplands, Over the chords of summer sustained peacefully.
A century of aeroplanes deserves its own music. As there are no precedents, I must create anew.
It is only that which cannot be expressed otherwise that is worth expressing in music.
Since I am coming to that holy room Where, withThy choir of saints forevermore, I shall be madeThy Music, as I come I tune the instrument here at the door, And what I must do then, think now before.
Who loves not music and the heavenly muse, That man God hates.
Music, Music for a while Shall all your cares beguile. Alexander's Feast
My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us, the world is full of it and you simply take as much as you require.
For I have known them all already, known them all Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room.
New music? Hell, there's been no new music since Stravinsky.
Music ismy mistress, and she playssecond fiddleto none.
Music is the poor man's Parnassus.
Music was invented to deceive and delude mankind.
If that was music, I have never understood what music was.
Much music marreth men's manners.
Quiet book-learning in monasteries and ethereal music, sonnets and courtly lovethat stuff is all fantasyand veneer You couldn't afford to let the beauty of the thing seduce you too far or you forgot the truth and the truth was always hard as iron bloody bars.
You maydream freely whenyou listen tomusic as well as when you look at painting.When you read a book you are the slave of the author's mind.
Music might tame and civilize wild beasts, but 'tis evident it never yet could tame and civilize musicians.
I got rhythm, I got music, I got my man Who could ask for anything more.
Away with the music of Broadway! Be off with your Irving Berlin! Oh, I'd give no quarter to Kern or Cole Porter and Gershwin keeps pounding on tin. How can I be civil when hearing this drivel? It's only for night-clubbing souses. Oh, give me the free 'n'easy waltz that is Viennesey And go tell the band if they want a hand the waltz must be Strauss's!
I can hum a fugue of which I've heard the music's din afore, And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore.
When I first heard Charlie Parker, I said,'That's how our music should be played.' After we got it together, yeah, I knew we were making something new. It was magic. Nobody on the planet was playing like that but us.
Now, our music is universal. It shares the rhythmic content of African music, music of the Western Hemisphere and various lands of the East, and has merged this rhythm with European harmonies, the soul of the slaves, the blues, and the spirituals to create jazz.
If we cannot spare some patience towards a piece of music or art, what hope do we have for showing it to another human being?
Please write music like Wagner, only louder.
I am sure my music has a taste of codfish in it.
The hills are alive with the sound of music With the songs they have sung For a thousand years.
The worstthing thatcanhappento oldgoodmusic isthat it might become dated for a while, but watch out, in twenty years it will come drifting back like bell-bottoms and W.C. Fields movies.
In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide.
She taught me what her uncle once taught her: How easily the biggest coal block split If you got the grain and hammer angled right. The sound of that relaxed alluring blow, Its co-opted and obliterated echo, Taught me to hit, taught me to loosen, Taught me between the hammer and the block To face the music. Teach me now to listen, To strike it rich behind the linear black.
Nothing is more futile than theorizing about music. No doubt there are laws, mathematically strict laws, but these laws are not music; they are only its conditions The essence of music is revelation.
You see there are portions of the human anatomy which would keep swinging after the music had finished.
You can't mess with people's heads, that's for sure. But that's what music's all about, messing with people's heads.
Music helps not the toothache.
There are only two things worth aiming for: good music and a clean conscience.
To write music is to raise a ladder without a wall to lean it against. There is no scaffolding: the building under construction is held in balance only by the miracle of a kind of internal logic, an innate sense of proportion.
The public doesn't want new music: the main thing it demands of a composer is that he be dead.
Elected Silence, sing to me And beat upon my whorled ear, Pipe me to pastures still and be The music that I care to hear.
After silence, that whichcomesnearestto expressing the inexpressible is music.
You can't learn architecture any more than you can learn a sense of music or of painting.You shouldn't talk about art, you should do it.
Some of the opera houses in Italy had to be burnt down because people could neither see nor hear. They gave up seeing years ago, but they did enjoy the music.
Of all noises I think music the least disagreeable.
Give me books, fruit, frenchwineand fine weatherand a little music out of doors, played by somebody I do not know.
The music, yearning like a God in pain.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too.
Music is no different from opium. Music affects the human mind in a way that makes peoplethinkof nothing but music and sensual matters Music is a treason to the country, a treason to our youth, and we should cut out all this music and replace it with something instructive.
The Appalling Popularity of Music.
Music is Love in search of a word.
The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machineryand primitive music and primitive medicine.
There's sure no passion in the human soul, But finds its food in music.
Music is the universal language of mankind.
And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold up their tents like Arabs, And as silently steal away. See Kaufman 455:57.
No one can read a poem unless he realises that it is a physical object as well as an abstract vehicle for conveying ideas. A poem has a material existence like a piece of music or sculpture or a plate of meat.
Let us pick up again these lost strands and weave them again into the fabric of Americasort out the music from the sounds and again respond to the trumpet and the steady drum.
Pop music is the classical music of now. See also Lennon 502:89.
I can't remember if I cried When I read about his widowed bride. Something touched me deep inside The day the music died.
And the three men I admired most, The Father, Son and Holy Ghost, They caught the last train for the coast The day the music died.
History, like a badly constructed concert hall, has occasional dead spots where the music can't be heard.
Music, Maestro, Please.
I think my music is like anchoviessome people love it, some people get nauseous.
Bier,Tabak und Musik. Da haben wir IhrVaterland! Beer, tobacco, and music.There we havethe Fatherland!
Die Zeit ist das Element der Erz a« hlung, wie sie das Element des Lebens ist,unl o« sbar damit verbunden, wie mit den K o« rpern im Raum. Sie ist auch das Element der Musik, als welche die Zeit misst und gliedert, sie kurzweilig und kostbar auf einmal macht. For time is the medium of narration, as it is the medium of life. Both are inextricably bound up with it, as are bodies in space. Similarly, time is the medium of music; music divides, measures, articulates time, and can shorten it, yet enhance its value, both at once.
Don't just move to the music, listen to what I'm saying.
If the king loves music, there is little wrong in the land.
Poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious music.
The operais to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.
Thus you see, Sir, that these people are not so unpolished as we represent them.'Tis true, their magnificence is of a different taste from ours, and perhaps of a better. I am almost of opinion, they have a right notion of life. They consume it in music, gardens, wine, and delicate eating, while we are tormenting our brains with some scheme of politics, or studying some sciencetowhichwe canneverattain, or, if we do, cannot persuade other people to set that value upon it we do ourselves We die or grow old before we can reap the fruit of our labours.Considering what short-lived weak animals men are, is there any study so beneficial as the study of present pleasure?
The harp that once through Tara's halls The soul of music shed, Now hangs as mute onTara's walls As if that soul were fled.
It is evidently known, beyond contradiction, that New Orleans is the cradle of jazz, and I, myself, happened to bethe creator intheyear1902 Jazz music isa style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in jazz, if one has the knowledge.
Melody is the very essence of music.When I thinkof a good melodist I thinkof a fine race horse. A contrapuntist is onlya post-horse.
Music is life, and, like it, inextinguishable.
Without music, life would be a mistake.
Music is the great cheer-up in the language of all countries.
It's just music.It's trying to play clean and looking for the pretty notes.
There is no boundary line to art. Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn.
Look out for this man's music; he has something to say and knows how to say it.
He that but once too nearly hears The music of forfended spheres Is thenceforth lonely, and for all His days as one who treads the Wall Of China, and, on this hand, sees Cities and their civilities And, on the other, lions. 643
I was born for soccer, just as Beethoven was born for music.
Music and women Icannot but give way to, whatever my business is.
As some to church repair, Not for the doctrine, but the music there.
Poetry must be read as music and not as oratory.
The author's conviction on this day of New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs toofar from the dance; that poetry beginsto atrophy when it getstoo far from music . . .
Idon't knowanything about musicin my line you don't have to.
The basic difference between classical music and jazz is that in the former music is always greater than its performancewhereas the way jazz is performed is always more important than what is being played.
Seated one day at the organ, I was weary and ill at ease, And my fingers wandered idly Over the noisy keys; I know not what I was playing, Or what I was dreaming then, But I struck one chord of music, Like the sound of a great Amen.
There isgeometry inthehumming of thestrings.There is music in the spacings of the spheres.
What is our life? a play of passion; Our mirth the music of division; Our mothers' wombs the tiring-houses be Where we are dressed for this short comedy. Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is, That sits and marks still who doth act amiss; Our graves that hide us from the searching sun Are like drawn curtains when the play is done. Thus march we, playing, to our latest rest, Only we die in earnestthat's no jest.
I've still so much music in my head.I have said nothing. I have so much more to say.
A piece for orchestra without music.
America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms, its humour, its music.How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as his own, is being persecuted and repressed, that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity.
There are two kinds: one takes the music too fast, and the other too slow. There is no third!
Idon'tthink therewasevera piece of music thatchanged a man's decision on how to vote.
My music is not modern, it is merely badly played.
Hell isfull of musical amateurs: music isthebrandyofthe damned.
Music when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken.
Your lordship, I suppose, is fond of music? Oh, passionately, onTuesdays and Saturdays.
A lamentable tune is the sweetest music to a woeful mind.
It wasn't a matterof becoming interested inmusic; music isa gift and a burden I'vehad since Icanremember who I was. I was born into music. The decision was how to make the best use of it.
What music ismore enchanting thanthevoices of young people, when you can't hear what they say?
Just as my fingers on these keys Make music, so the self-same sounds On my spirit make a music, too. Music is feeling, then, not a sound; And thus it is that what I feel, Here in this room, desiring you, Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk, Is music.
Musicians paint their pictures on silencewe provide the music, and you provide the silence.
My music is best understood by children and animals.
For a dayand a night Love sang to us, played with us, Folded us round from the dark and the light; And our hearts were fulfilled with the music he made with us, Made with our hands and our lips while he stayed with us, Stayed in mid passage his pinions from flight For a dayand a night.
There is sweet music here that softer falls Than petals from blown roses on the grass, Or night dews on still waters between walls Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass; Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.
Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before.
It is little rift within the lute, That by and by will make the music mute, And ever widening slowly silence all.
The city is built To music, therefore never built at all, And therefore built for ever.
Oh I'm a martyr to music.
The men, the music piercing that solitude And silence, told me truths I had not dreamed, And have forgotten since their beauty passed.
The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is be an American and then write any kind of music you wish.
God tells me how he wants this music playedand you get in his way.
I have been told that Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
Un poe' te C'est un e" tre unique ' A des tas d'exemplaires Qui ne pense qu'en vers Et n'e crit qu'en musique Sur des sujets divers Des rouges ou des verts Mais toujours magnifiques. A poet Is a unique being From an exemplary multitude Who only thinks in verse And only writes in music On diverse subjects Reds and greens But always magnificently. 880
You just pick a chord, go twang, and you've got music.
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.
If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation.
: I think Jack, for instance, a charming name. :Jack? No, there is very little music in the name Jack, if any at all, indeed. It does not thrill. It produces absolutely no vibrations I have known several Jacks, and theyall, without exception, weremore than usually plain. Besides,Jack is a notorious domesticity for John! And I pity any woman who is married to a man called John. She would probably never be allowed to know the entrancing pleasure of a single moment's solitude. The only really safe name is Ernest.
In memory everything seems to happen to music.
A rather bitter Britishmusicianonceremarked sourly toa friend of mine: 'Oh, all she knows about music she learned in bed with musicians.' To that, I can only add, what better place to learn?
For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing often-times The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.
Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife: Come, hear the woodland linnet How sweet his music! on my life There's more of wisdom in it.
Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows Like harmony in music; there is a dark Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles Discordant elements, makes them cling together In one society.
Two voices are there; one is of the sea, One of the mountains; each a mighty voice: In both from age to age thou didst rejoice, They were thy chosen music, Liberty!
Jazz musicians have some outlaw in them somewhere if theyare serious about this music There is no valid motivation for it other than loveoutlaw motivation in a profit-motivated society.
Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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