• I was never that into the movies. Never. Even as a youngster. I became interested in movie music only because of the studio orchestras in Hollywood.

  

  John Williams

  MusicianAmerican1932 · 20th century

  3.8 · 47 votes · 86 reads

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• I was rather disappointed, because the one thing I wanted to gain from that opportunity was to add something to his music, and have him add something to mine.

  M

  Michael Nyman

  MusicianBritish1944 · 20th century

  3.4 · 22 votes · 60 reads

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• I was training to be an electrician. I suppose I got wired the wrong way round somewhere along the line.

  

  Elvis Presley

  MusicianAmerican1935 · 20th century

  3.3 · 63 votes · 78 reads

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• I will seize fate by the throat; it shall certainly never wholly overcome me.

  

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  MusicianGerman1770 · 18th century

  4.2 · 54 votes · 101 reads

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• I wish I could score everything for horns.

  

  Richard Wagner

  MusicianGerman1813 · 19th century

  4.3 · 38 votes · 46 reads

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• I worked hard. Anyone who works as hard as I did can achieve the same results.

  

  Johann Sebastian Bach

  MusicianGerman1685 · 17th century

  4.3 · 5 votes · 101 reads

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• I would've loved to have been in a band, but sadly I just wasn't good enough.

  

  Tony Blair

  PoliticianEnglish1953 · 20th century

  3.6 · 53 votes · 55 reads

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• I write music with an exclamation point!

  

  Richard Wagner

  MusicianGerman1813 · 19th century

  4.1 · 27 votes · 188 reads

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• I'll never feel comfortable taking a strong drink, and I'll never feel easy smoking a cigarette. I just don't think those things are right for me.

  

  Elvis Presley

  MusicianAmerican1935 · 20th century

  4.7 · 23 votes · 72 reads

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• I'll never make it, it will never happen, because they're never going to hear me 'cause they're screaming all the time.

  

  Elvis Presley

  MusicianAmerican1935 · 20th century

  4.0 · 19 votes · 9 reads

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• I'm not a great inventor from scratch. What I do is to use, steal, acquire, reproduce or re-cycle music from other musicians.

  M

  Michael Nyman

  MusicianBritish1944 · 20th century

  4.0 · 45 votes · 45 reads

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• I'm not trying to be sexy. It's just my way of expressing myself when I move around.

  

  Elvis Presley

  MusicianAmerican1935 · 20th century

  3.5 · 47 votes · 172 reads

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• I'm so nervous. I've always been nervous, ever since I was a kid.

  

  Elvis Presley

  MusicianAmerican1935 · 20th century

  3.2 · 63 votes · 180 reads

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• I'm trying to keep a level head. You have to be careful out in the world. It's so easy to get turned.

  

  Elvis Presley

  MusicianAmerican1935 · 20th century

  4.2 · 58 votes · 105 reads

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• I've never written a song in my life. It's all a big hoax.

  

  Elvis Presley

  MusicianAmerican1935 · 20th century

  3.1 · 19 votes · 78 reads

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• If I decide to be an idiot, then I'll be an idiot on my own accord.

  

  Johann Sebastian Bach

  MusicianGerman1685 · 17th century

  3.3 · 15 votes · 163 reads

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• If music be the food of love; play on.

  

  William Shakespeare

  WriterBritish1564 · 16th century

  4.9 · 15 votes · 170 reads

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• If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation.

  

  Oscar Wilde

  PoetIrish1854 · 19th century

  4.9 · 27 votes · 137 reads

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• If only your pure and clean mind could touch me, dear Haydn, nobody has a greater reverence for you than I have.

  

  Franz Schubert

  MusicianAustrian1797 · 18th century

  4.8 · 36 votes · 117 reads

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• If the newspapers cut me up so much that I shall not venture before the world again, I have resolved to become a house painter; that would be as easy as anything else, and I should, at any rate, still be an artist!

  

  Frederic Chopin

  MusicianPolish1810 · 19th century

  4.6 · 62 votes · 45 reads

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• If we were all determined to play the first violin we should never have an ensemble. therefore, respect every musician in his proper place.

  

  Robert Schumann

  MusicianGerman1810 · 19th century

  4.2 · 25 votes · 92 reads

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• If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.

  

  Thomas Carlyle

  WriterBritish1795 · 18th century

  3.1 · 13 votes · 39 reads

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• Imagination creates reality.

  

  Richard Wagner

  MusicianGerman1813 · 19th century

  4.3 · 27 votes · 38 reads

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• In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love?

  

  Igor Stravinsky

  MusicianRussian1882 · 19th century

  5.0 · 51 votes · 64 reads

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• Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements.

  G

  Giacomo Puccini

  MusicianItalian1858 · 19th century

  3.8 · 30 votes · 13 reads

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• Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale souls out of men's bodies?

  

  William Shakespeare

  WriterBritish1564 · 16th century

  3.0 · 54 votes · 84 reads

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• It had a very good arrangement by Herbie Hancock, but it used existing pieces.

  E

  Ennio Morricone

  MusicianItalian1928 · 20th century

  4.0 · 56 votes · 17 reads

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• It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.

  

  Samuel Beckett

  WriterIrish1906 · 20th century

  3.8 · 34 votes · 64 reads

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• It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of ''culture.''

  J

  John Cage

  MusicianAmerican1912 · 20th century

  5.0 · 15 votes · 128 reads

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• It is not hard to compose, but what is fabulously hard is to leave the superfluous notes under the table.

  

  Johannes Brahms

  MusicianGerman1833 · 19th century

  4.1 · 48 votes · 14 reads

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• It is piracy, not overt online music stores, which is our main competitor.

  

  Steve Jobs

  BusinessmanAmerican1955 · 20th century

  3.7 · 37 votes · 27 reads

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• It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

  

  Samuel Johnson

  AuthorBritish1709 · 18th century

  3.3 · 34 votes · 151 reads

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• It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites -opposite bents, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where there is no polarity -where energies flow smoothly in one direction -there will be much doing but no music.

  

  Eric Hoffer

  AuthorAmerican1902 · 20th century

  3.5 · 22 votes · 6 reads

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• It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.

  

  Johann Sebastian Bach

  MusicianGerman1685 · 17th century

  3.2 · 33 votes · 108 reads

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• It's human nature to gripe, but I'm going ahead and doing the best I can.

  

  Elvis Presley

  MusicianAmerican1935 · 20th century

  3.4 · 9 votes · 164 reads

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• Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance.

  

  Francoise Sagan

  WriterFrench1935 · 20th century

  3.4 · 63 votes · 158 reads

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• Joy is not in things; it is in us.

  

  Richard Wagner

  MusicianGerman1813 · 19th century

  3.6 · 25 votes · 31 reads

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• Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

  

  Igor Stravinsky

  MusicianRussian1882 · 19th century

  3.9 · 54 votes · 105 reads

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• Like all music, the figured bass should have no other end and aim than the glory of God and the recreation of the soul; where this is not kept in mind there is no true music, but only an infernal clamour and ranting.

  

  Johann Sebastian Bach

  MusicianGerman1685 · 17th century

  4.1 · 28 votes · 167 reads

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• Love cannot express the idea of music, while music may give an idea of love.

  

  Hector Berlioz

  MusicianFrench1803 · 19th century

  4.7 · 40 votes · 113 reads

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• Man, I really like Vegas.

  

  Elvis Presley

  MusicianAmerican1935 · 20th century

  4.6 · 7 votes · 46 reads

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• Medicine to produce health must examine disease; and music, to create harmony must investigate discord.

  

  Plutarch

  EssayistGreek46 · 1st century

  4.6 · 19 votes · 183 reads

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• Mendelssohn I consider the first musician of the day; I doff my hat to him as my superior. He plays with everything, especially with the grouping of the instruments in the orchestra, but with such ease, delicacy and art, with such mastery throughout.

  

  Robert Schumann

  MusicianGerman1810 · 19th century

  3.4 · 59 votes · 77 reads

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• Music causes us to think eloquently.

  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  PoetAmerican1803 · 19th century

  4.2 · 49 votes · 172 reads

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• Music expresses that which can not be said and on which it is impossible to be silent

  

  Umberto Eco

  NovelistItaly1932 · 20th century

  3.6 · 48 votes · 102 reads

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• Music hath the charm to soothe a savage beast, but I'd try a revolver first.

  

  Josh Billings

  ComedianAmerican1815 · 19th century

  3.7 · 41 votes · 200 reads

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• Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.

  

  Henry Miller

  AuthorAmerican1891 · 19th century

  3.1 · 51 votes · 14 reads

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• Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

  

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  MusicianGerman1770 · 18th century

  4.5 · 23 votes · 43 reads

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• Music is an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible delights of the soul.

  

  Johann Sebastian Bach

  MusicianGerman1685 · 17th century

  3.2 · 41 votes · 7 reads

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• Music is essentially useless, as life is.

  

  George Santayana

  PoetSpanish- American1863 · 19th century

  4.0 · 21 votes · 104 reads

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• Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.

  

  Igor Stravinsky

  MusicianRussian1882 · 19th century

  3.5 · 62 votes · 76 reads

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• Music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good or bad to the deaf.

  

  Benedict de Spinoza

  PhilosopherDutch1632 · 17th century

  3.7 · 6 votes · 75 reads

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• Music is spiritual. The music business is not.

  C

  Claudio Monteverdi

  MusicianItalian1567 · 16th century

  3.0 · 33 votes · 145 reads

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• Music is the fourth great material want, first food, then clothes, then shelter, then music.

  C

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  AuthorAmerican1820 · 19th century

  3.5 · 39 votes · 120 reads

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• Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

  

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  MusicianGerman1770 · 18th century

  4.8 · 51 votes · 146 reads

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• Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.

  

  Pierre Beaumarchais

  PlaywrightFrench1732 · 18th century

  4.6 · 41 votes · 185 reads

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• Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

  

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  MusicianGerman1770 · 18th century

  3.5 · 33 votes · 167 reads

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• Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.

  E

  Emil Cioran

  PhilosopherRomanian1911 · 20th century

  3.6 · 51 votes · 110 reads

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• Music is the shorthand of emotion.

  

  Leo Tolstoy

  WriterRussian1828 · 19th century

  3.3 · 45 votes · 120 reads

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• Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.

  

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  MusicianGerman1770 · 18th century

  4.9 · 17 votes · 19 reads

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• Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.

  

  Thomas Carlyle

  WriterBritish1795 · 18th century

  4.0 · 15 votes · 167 reads

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• Music of all the arts has the most influence on the passions and the legislator should give it the greatest encouragement.

  

  John D. Rockefeller

  BusinessmanAmerican1839 · 19th century

  4.0 · 19 votes · 105 reads

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• Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of women.

  

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  MusicianGerman1770 · 18th century

  3.0 · 39 votes · 68 reads

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• Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.

  

  John Ruskin

  WriterEnglish1819 · 19th century

  4.9 · 7 votes · 90 reads

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• Music, even with these dial-up connections you have to the Internet, is very practical to download.

  

  Bill Gates

  BusinessmanAmerican1955 · 20th century

  3.7 · 51 votes · 127 reads

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• Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

  F

  Frank Zappa

  MusicianAmerican1940 · 20th century

  4.1 · 60 votes · 149 reads

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• Music, the greatest good that mortals know, and all of heaven we have below.

  

  Joseph Addison

  PoetEnglish1672 · 17th century

  3.5 · 16 votes · 41 reads

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• Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be absolutely deaf.

  

  Oscar Wilde

  PoetIrish1854 · 19th century

  4.7 · 63 votes · 190 reads

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• My masters are strange folk with very little care for music in them.

  

  Johann Sebastian Bach

  MusicianGerman1685 · 17th century

  4.6 · 20 votes · 181 reads

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• My music is best understood by children and animals.

  

  Igor Stravinsky

  MusicianRussian1882 · 19th century

  3.4 · 43 votes · 30 reads

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• My symphonies would have reached Opus 100 if I had but written them down... Sometimes I am so full of music, and so overflowing with melody, that I find it simply impossible to write down anything.

  

  Robert Schumann

  MusicianGerman1810 · 19th century

  3.3 · 29 votes · 78 reads

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• Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them.

  

  Richard Wagner

  MusicianGerman1813 · 19th century

  3.1 · 17 votes · 58 reads

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• Never look at the trombones. You'll only encourage them.

  R

  Richard Strauss

  MusicianGerman1864 · 19th century

  3.7 · 54 votes · 41 reads

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• Nevertheless the passions, whether violent or not, should never be so expressed as to reach the point of causing disgust; and music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby

  

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  MusicianAustrian1756 · 18th century

  5.0 · 33 votes · 111 reads

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• Next to theology I give music the highest place of honor.

  

  Martin Luther

  LeaderGerman1483 · 15th century

  4.8 · 35 votes · 165 reads

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• No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.

  W

  W. C. Fields

  ComedianAmerican1880 · 19th century

  4.4 · 10 votes · 36 reads

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• Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.

  

  Joseph Addison

  PoetEnglish1672 · 17th century

  4.0 · 11 votes · 22 reads

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• Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.

  

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  MusicianGerman1770 · 18th century

  3.7 · 49 votes · 47 reads

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• Nothing right can be accomplished in art without enthusiasm.

  

  Robert Schumann

  MusicianGerman1810 · 19th century

  4.5 · 5 votes · 112 reads

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• Oh, how hard it must be to die anywhere but in one's birthplace.

  

  Frederic Chopin

  MusicianPolish1810 · 19th century

  3.9 · 46 votes · 184 reads

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Page 2 of 4 · 243 quotes about music

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