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Music quotes

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“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, “The Importance of Being Earnest” - 1895

“If music be the food of love, play on;” William Shakespeare, “Twelfth Night” - 1623

“The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;” William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice” - 1600

“Politics can be strengthened by music, but music has a potency that defies politics.” Nelson Mandela, “Long Walk to Freedom” - 1995

“Rap has been a path between cultures in the best tradition of popular music.” Jay-Z, “Decoded” - 2010

“In the end, you can’t censor the truth, especially when it comes packaged in hot music.” Jay-Z, “Decoded” - 2010

“Music, moody food of us that trade in love.” William Shakespeare, “Antony and Cleopatra” - 1623

“He wanted to cry quietly but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music.” James Joyce, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” - 1916

“It is not easy to determine the nature of music, or why any one should have a knowledge of it.” Aristotle, “Politics”

“Therefore it has always been said that music is the language of feeling and of passion, as words are the language of reason.” Arthur Schopenhauer, “The World as Will and Representation” - 1819

“Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule.” Samuel Butler, “The Note-Books of Samuel Butler” - 1912

“He said, in this one part, that a woman's body is like a violin and all, and that it takes a terrific musician to play it right.” J. D. Salinger, “The Catcher in the Rye” - 1951

“Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth, truth is not beauty, beauty is not love, love is not music. Music is the best.” Frank Zappa, “The Real Frank Zappa Book” - 1989

“Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.” Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” - 1890

“Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!” Bram Stoker, “Dracula” - 1897

“Definition of rock journalism: People who can't write, doing interviews with people who can't think, in order to prepare articles for people who can't read.” Frank Zappa, “The Real Frank Zappa Book” - 1989

“It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.” George Eliot, “Middlemarch” - 1872

“each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Great Gatsby” - 1925

“There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard.” Sun Tzu, “The Art of War” - 5th century BC

“Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.” Frank Zappa, “The Real Frank Zappa Book” - 1989

“There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting.” William Shakespeare, “Much Ado About Nothing” - 1600

“Hand in hand, with fairy grace, will we sing, and bless this place.” William Shakespeare, “A Midsummer Night's Dream” - 1601

“I am never merry when I hear sweet music.” William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice” - 1600

“Though music oft hath such a charm to make bad good, and good provoke to harm.” William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure” - 1623

“How sour sweet music is when time is broke and no proportion kept! So is it in the music of men's lives.” William Shakespeare, “Richard II” - 1595

“It's a comfortable thing, music is.” William Faulkner, “As I Lay Dying” - 1930

“Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?” William Shakespeare, “Shakespeare's Sonnets” - 1609

“How irksome is this music to my heart! When such strings jar, what hope of harmony?” William Shakespeare, “Henry VI, Part 2” - 1594

“And she didn't know their names, but friends she knew they were, friends without names, songs without words, always the best.” Virginia Woolf, “Mrs Dalloway” - 1925

“That innate love of melody, which she had inherited from her ballad-singing mother, gave the simplest music a power over her which could well-nigh drag her heart out of her bosom at times.” Thomas Hardy, “Tess of the d'Urbervilles” - 1891

“Like all other music, it breathed passion and pathos, and emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to the human heart, wherever educated.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Scarlet Letter” - 1850

“I'm afraid there are moments in life when even Schubert has nothing to say to us. We must admit, however, that they are our worst.” Henry James, “The Portrait of a Lady” - 1881

“This is why the effect of music is so much more powerful and penetrating than that of the other arts, for they speak only of shadows, but it speaks of the thing itself.” Arthur Schopenhauer, “The World as Will and Representation” - 1819

“The music business is a strange combination of having real and intangible assets: pop bands are brand names in themselves, and at a given stage in their careers their name alone can practically guarantee hit records.” Richard Branson, “Losing My Virginity” - 1998

“The world around me is dissolving, leaving here and there spots of time. The world is a cancer eating itself away… I am thinking that when the great silence descends upon all and everywhere music will at last triumph.” Henry Miller, “Tropic of Cancer” - 1934

“In memory everything seems to happen to music.” Tennessee Williams, “The Glass Menagerie” - 1944

“The music is meant to be provocative — which doesn’t mean it’s necessarily obnoxious, but it is (mostly) confrontational, and more than that, it’s dense with multiple meanings.” Jay-Z, “Decoded” - 2010

“I really was never any more than what I was — a folk musician who gazed into the gray mist with tear-blinded eyes and made up songs that floated in a luminous haze.” Bob Dylan, “Chronicles, Volume One” - 2004

“Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance space is sculpted into something.” Frank Zappa, “The Real Frank Zappa Book” - 1989

“A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.” Frank Zappa, “The Real Frank Zappa Book” - 1989

“Believe it or not, there are places in the world where music is important. There are places in the world where all the arts are a matter of national pride.” Frank Zappa, “The Real Frank Zappa Book” - 1989

“Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves.” Oscar Wilde, “A Woman of No Importance” - 1893

“Ah, music, . . . A magic beyond all we do here!” J. K. Rowling, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone” - 1997

“Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at.” Arthur Conan Doyle, “A Study in Scarlet” - 1887

“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.” Edith Wharton, “The Age of Innocence” - 1920

“you couldn’t not like someone who liked the guitar.” Stephen King, “The Stand” - 1978

“There are two instruments that are worse than a clarionet—two clarionets.” Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil's Dictionary” - 1906

“After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own.” Oscar Wilde, “Intentions” - 1891

“A little tap at the window, as though some missile had struck it, followed by a plentiful, falling sound, as light, though, as if a shower of sand were being sprinkled from a window overhead; then the fall spread, took on an order, a rhythm,...” Marcel Proust, “Swann's Way” - 1913

“To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.” Henry Miller, “Tropic of Cancer” - 1934

Related topics

life love passion art emotions words language feeling heart power poetry melody rap men food reason truth knowledge listening speech

Related authors

William Shakespeare (10)
Frank Zappa (7)
Oscar Wilde (4)
Jay-Z (4)
Arthur Schopenhauer (2)
Henry Miller (2)
George Bernard Shaw (1)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1)
William Faulkner (1)
James Joyce (1)
J. K. Rowling (1)
George Eliot (1)
Nelson Mandela (1)
Arthur Conan Doyle (1)
Virginia Woolf (1)
Bram Stoker (1)
Aristotle (1)
Thomas Hardy (1)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1)
Henry James (1)

Related sources

The Real Frank Zappa Book (7)
Decoded (4)
The Merchant of Venice (2)
The World as Will and Representation (2)
Tropic of Cancer (2)
Twelfth Night (1)
Shakespeare's Sonnets (1)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1)
Much Ado About Nothing (1)
Henry VI, Part 2 (1)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1)
The Importance of Being Earnest (1)
Man and Superman (1)
As I Lay Dying (1)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1)
Antony and Cleopatra (1)
Measure for Measure (1)
Richard II (1)
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1)
Middlemarch (1)