• One bites into the brass mouthpiece of his wooden cudgel, and the other blows his cheeks out on a French horn. Do you call that Art?

  

  Franz Schubert

  MusicianAustrian1797 · 18th century

  4.3 · 63 votes · 59 reads

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• One can't judge Wagner's opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don't intend to hear it a second time.

  G

  Gioachino Rossini

  MusicianItalian1792 · 18th century

  4.2 · 44 votes · 146 reads

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• One is hardly sensible of fatigue while he marches to music.

  

  Thomas Carlyle

  WriterBritish1795 · 18th century

  4.3 · 33 votes · 192 reads

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• One must not make oneself cheap here - that is a cardinal point - or else one is done. Whoever is most impertinent has the best chance.

  

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  MusicianAustrian1756 · 18th century

  4.3 · 36 votes · 185 reads

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• Only sick music makes money today.

  

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  WriterGerman1844 · 19th century

  3.7 · 44 votes · 86 reads

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• Opera in English, is about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

  

  Henry Louis Mencken

  JournalistAmerican1880 · 19th century

  3.2 · 64 votes · 48 reads

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• Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

  

  Pearl S. Buck

  NovelistAmerican1892 · 19th century

  4.0 · 61 votes · 47 reads

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• People ask me where I got my singing style. I didn't copy my style from anybody.

  

  Elvis Presley

  MusicianAmerican1935 · 20th century

  3.2 · 23 votes · 72 reads

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• People often complain that music is too ambiguous, that what they should think when they hear it is so unclear, whereas everyone understands words. With me, it is exactly the opposite, and not only with regard to an entire speech but also with individual

  F

  Felix Mendelssohn

  MusicianGerman1809 · 19th century

  3.2 · 37 votes · 86 reads

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• Rhythm is something you either have or don't have, but when you have it, you have it all over.

  

  Elvis Presley

  MusicianAmerican1935 · 20th century

  3.6 · 28 votes · 123 reads

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• Richard Wagner, a musician who wrote music which is better than it sounds.

  

  Richard Wagner

  MusicianGerman1813 · 19th century

  4.8 · 12 votes · 102 reads

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• Rock and roll music, if you like it, if you feel it, you can't help but move to it. That's what happens to me. I can't help it.'

  

  Elvis Presley

  MusicianAmerican1935 · 20th century

  4.2 · 29 votes · 38 reads

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• Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.

  

  Frederic Chopin

  MusicianPolish1810 · 19th century

  4.1 · 7 votes · 195 reads

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• Since the beginning, it was just the same. The only difference, the crowds are bigger now.

  

  Elvis Presley

  MusicianAmerican1935 · 20th century

  3.1 · 24 votes · 146 reads

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• Sometimes I can only groan, and suffer, and pour out my despair at the piano!

  

  Frederic Chopin

  MusicianPolish1810 · 19th century

  3.3 · 61 votes · 109 reads

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• Song is the heroics of speech.

  

  Thomas Carlyle

  WriterBritish1795 · 18th century

  4.2 · 50 votes · 150 reads

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• Straight-away the ideas flow in upon me, directly from God, and not only do I see distinct themes in my mind's eye, but they are clothed in the right forms, harmonies, and orchestration.

  

  Johannes Brahms

  MusicianGerman1833 · 19th century

  4.5 · 43 votes · 180 reads

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• Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.

  

  John Milton

  PoetEnglish1608 · 17th century

  3.0 · 61 votes · 152 reads

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• 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

  AuthorAmerican1809 · 19th century

  4.4 · 44 votes · 120 reads

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• Talent works, genius creates.

  

  Robert Schumann

  MusicianGerman1810 · 19th century

  3.5 · 42 votes · 158 reads

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• Thanks to nanny, I've got a deep understanding of Russian tales.

  M

  Modest Mussorgsky

  MusicianRussian1839 · 19th century

  3.3 · 63 votes · 2 reads

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• That's why I hate to get started in these jam sessions. I'm always the last one to leave.

  

  Elvis Presley

  MusicianAmerican1935 · 20th century

  4.4 · 52 votes · 116 reads

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• The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.

  

  Johann Sebastian Bach

  MusicianGerman1685 · 17th century

  3.7 · 16 votes · 144 reads

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• The author's conviction on this day of New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music; but this must not be taken as implying that all good music is dance musi

  E

  Ezra Pound

  PoetAmerican1885 · 19th century

  4.8 · 7 votes · 17 reads

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• The Church knew what the psalmist knew: Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise him than the building of the church and all its decoration; it is the Church's greatest ornament.

  

  Igor Stravinsky

  MusicianRussian1882 · 19th century

  3.1 · 20 votes · 80 reads

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• The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I'm doin' now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.

  

  Elvis Presley

  MusicianAmerican1935 · 20th century

  3.6 · 26 votes · 183 reads

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• The crowd intimidates me, its breath suffocates me. I feel paralyzed by its curious look, and the unknown faces make me dumb.

  

  Frederic Chopin

  MusicianPolish1810 · 19th century

  3.2 · 52 votes · 162 reads

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• The effects of good music are not just because it's new; on the contrary music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it.

  

  Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

  PoetGerman1749 · 18th century

  3.3 · 32 votes · 7 reads

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• The end of all good music is to affect the soul.

  C

  Claudio Monteverdi

  MusicianItalian1567 · 16th century

  4.0 · 53 votes · 159 reads

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• The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.

  F

  Felix Mendelssohn

  MusicianGerman1809 · 19th century

  3.5 · 48 votes · 184 reads

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• The flame that is naturally clear always gives the most light and heat. If I could blend my talent for poetry and music into one, the light would burn still clearer, and I might go far.

  

  Robert Schumann

  MusicianGerman1810 · 19th century

  4.2 · 60 votes · 129 reads

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• The human voice is the most beautiful instrument of all, but it is the most difficult to play.

  R

  Richard Strauss

  MusicianGerman1864 · 19th century

  3.7 · 45 votes · 102 reads

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• The luck of having talent is not enough; one must also have a talent for luck.

  

  Hector Berlioz

  MusicianFrench1803 · 19th century

  3.5 · 12 votes · 59 reads

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• The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. The motions of his spirit are dull as night, and his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted.

  

  William Shakespeare

  WriterBritish1564 · 16th century

  4.0 · 30 votes · 74 reads

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• The manner in which Americans ''consume'' music has a lot to do with leaving it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles, like the score of a movie -it's consumed that way without any regard for how and why it's made.

  F

  Frank Zappa

  MusicianAmerican1940 · 20th century

  3.7 · 55 votes · 148 reads

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• The modern composer builds upon the foundation of truth.

  C

  Claudio Monteverdi

  MusicianItalian1567 · 16th century

  4.4 · 60 votes · 114 reads

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• The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.

  

  Igor Stravinsky

  MusicianRussian1882 · 19th century

  3.0 · 57 votes · 49 reads

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• The only thing that was economic, I might say, about my music career, aside from the fact that I did everybody's tax returns in the band, was the decision I made to leave the music business on economic grounds.

  

  Alan Greenspan

  EconomistAmerican1926 · 20th century

  4.4 · 42 votes · 26 reads

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• The Opera is obviously the first draft of a fine spectacle; it suggests the idea of one.

  

  Jean de la Bruyère

  French1645 · 17th century

  4.1 · 14 votes · 25 reads

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• The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

  

  Henry Louis Mencken

  JournalistAmerican1880 · 19th century

  4.7 · 37 votes · 140 reads

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• The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.

  

  Henry David Thoreau

  PoetAmerican1817 · 19th century

  4.2 · 55 votes · 111 reads

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• The principle of the endless melody is the perpetual becoming of a music that never had any reason for starting, any more than it has any reason for ending.

  

  Igor Stravinsky

  MusicianRussian1882 · 19th century

  3.8 · 58 votes · 14 reads

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• The real composer thinks about his work the whole time; he is not always conscious of this, but he is aware of it later when he suddenly knows what he will do.

  

  Igor Stravinsky

  MusicianRussian1882 · 19th century

  4.1 · 41 votes · 152 reads

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• The thing about hip-hop today is it's smart, it's insightful. The way they can communicate a complex message in a very short space is remarkable.

  

  Barack Obama

  PoliticianAmerican1961 · 20th century

  5.0 · 21 votes · 55 reads

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• The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.

  

  Igor Stravinsky

  MusicianRussian1882 · 19th century

  4.6 · 41 votes · 121 reads

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• The world resembles a stage on which every man is playing a part.

  

  Franz Schubert

  MusicianAustrian1797 · 18th century

  4.7 · 31 votes · 172 reads

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• There are German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry.

  

  Mark Twain

  WriterAmerican1835 · 19th century

  3.1 · 29 votes · 155 reads

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• There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another.

  F

  Frank Zappa

  MusicianAmerican1940 · 20th century

  3.7 · 59 votes · 68 reads

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• There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.

  

  Pythagoras

  MathematicianGreek-582 · 6th century BC

  3.4 · 60 votes · 158 reads

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• There is something suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is, by her nature, equivocal. I shall not be going too far in saying at once that she is politically suspect.

  T

  Thomas Kempis

  AuthorGerman1379 · 14th century

  3.6 · 50 votes · 96 reads

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• There once was a brainy baboon who always breathed down a bassoon for he said, ''It appears that in billions of years I shall certainly hit on a tune.''

  E

  Ezra Pound

  PoetAmerican1885 · 19th century

  4.9 · 16 votes · 40 reads

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• There was a theft! But, of course, if it was up to me, every two years I would win an Oscar.

  E

  Ennio Morricone

  MusicianItalian1928 · 20th century

  3.0 · 61 votes · 109 reads

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• There was no one near to confuse me, so I was forced to become original.

  J

  Joseph Haydn

  MusicianAustrian1732 · 18th century

  3.5 · 60 votes · 7 reads

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• There's always a question of duration, there's a question of who the orchestra is. No one is free to write what you want - you collaborate on a film score, and one of the good things is that someone else's work is motivating you.

  M

  Michael Nyman

  MusicianBritish1944 · 20th century

  4.5 · 54 votes · 166 reads

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• These seem to me so ambiguous, so vague, so easily misunderstood in comparison to genuine music, which fills the soul with a thousand things better than words.

  F

  Felix Mendelssohn

  MusicianGerman1809 · 19th century

  3.2 · 37 votes · 179 reads

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• They put me on television. And the whole thing broke loose. It was wild, I tell ya for sure.

  

  Elvis Presley

  MusicianAmerican1935 · 20th century

  3.9 · 7 votes · 60 reads

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• They said, ''You have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are. The man replied, ''Things as they are changed upon a blue guitar.''

  

  W. Somerset Maugham

  WriterBritish1874 · 19th century

  4.0 · 51 votes · 159 reads

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• This is the mark of a really admirable man: steadfastness in the face of trouble.

  

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  MusicianGerman1770 · 18th century

  4.4 · 22 votes · 198 reads

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• Though everything else may appear shallow and repulsive, even the smallest task in music is so absorbing, and carries us so far away from town, country, earth, and all worldly things, that it is truly a blessed gift of God.

  F

  Felix Mendelssohn

  MusicianGerman1809 · 19th century

  3.8 · 15 votes · 23 reads

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• To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.

  

  Igor Stravinsky

  MusicianRussian1882 · 19th century

  4.4 · 31 votes · 46 reads

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• To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist.

  

  Robert Schumann

  MusicianGerman1810 · 19th century

  4.3 · 25 votes · 132 reads

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• Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.

  

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  MusicianGerman1770 · 18th century

  4.0 · 5 votes · 37 reads

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• Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.

  

  Igor Stravinsky

  MusicianRussian1882 · 19th century

  4.7 · 55 votes · 24 reads

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• Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

  

  Albert Camus

  NovelistFrench1913 · 20th century

  4.9 · 10 votes · 27 reads

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• Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour.

  G

  Gioachino Rossini

  MusicianItalian1792 · 18th century

  3.8 · 40 votes · 150 reads

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• Wagner manages to convey emotion with music better than anyone, before or since.

  

  Stephen Hawking

  PhysicistEnglish1942 · 20th century

  3.5 · 33 votes · 41 reads

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• We cling nervously to the melody, but we don't handle it freely, we don't really make anything new out of it, we merely overload it.

  

  Johannes Brahms

  MusicianGerman1833 · 19th century

  5.0 · 11 votes · 158 reads

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• What a beautiful art, but what a wretched profession.

  G

  Georges Bizet

  MusicianFrench1838 · 19th century

  4.2 · 56 votes · 13 reads

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• What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.

  

  Igor Stravinsky

  MusicianRussian1882 · 19th century

  3.7 · 11 votes · 180 reads

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• What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.

  

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  MusicianGerman1770 · 18th century

  4.2 · 44 votes · 44 reads

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• When I am traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that ideas flow best and most abundantly.

  

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  MusicianAustrian1756 · 18th century

  3.6 · 49 votes · 107 reads

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• When I was a boy, I always saw myself as a hero in comic books and in movies. I grew up believing this dream.

  

  Elvis Presley

  MusicianAmerican1935 · 20th century

  3.5 · 39 votes · 1 reads

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• When I wished to sing of love, it turned to sorrow. And when I wished to sing of sorrow, it was transformed for me into love.

  

  Franz Schubert

  MusicianAustrian1797 · 18th century

  3.3 · 49 votes · 53 reads

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• Where there is devotional music, God is always at hand with His gracious presence.

  

  Johann Sebastian Bach

  MusicianGerman1685 · 17th century

  3.0 · 43 votes · 149 reads

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• Wherever the fish are, that's where we go.

  

  Richard Wagner

  MusicianGerman1813 · 19th century

  3.5 · 54 votes · 39 reads

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• Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa-Lobos?

  

  Igor Stravinsky

  MusicianRussian1882 · 19th century

  4.9 · 32 votes · 161 reads

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• Why should the composer be more guilty than the poet who warms to fantasy by a strange flame, making an idea that inspires him the subject of his own very different treatment?

  

  Franz Schubert

  MusicianAustrian1797 · 18th century

  4.4 · 23 votes · 37 reads

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• Without music, life would be a mistake.

  

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  WriterGerman1844 · 19th century

  4.3 · 35 votes · 89 reads

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• Without music, life would be an error. The German imagines even God singing songs

  

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  WriterGerman1844 · 19th century

  4.1 · 19 votes · 66 reads

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• Working in Hollywood for the orchestra world is a very time consuming and laborious job.

  

  John Williams

  MusicianAmerican1932 · 20th century

  4.2 · 48 votes · 57 reads

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Page 3 of 4 · 243 quotes about music

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