MUSIC QUOTES III
quotations about music
O Music! language of the soul,
Of love, of God to man;
Bright beam from heaven thrilling,
That lightens sorrow's weight.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
"Apostrophe," Imogen and Other Poems
Music is a language lovers understand
Melody and romance wander hand in hand
Cupid never fails assisted by a band
So if you have something sweet to tell her
Say it with music
IRVING BERLIN
"Say It With Music"
I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!
ELIZABETH BISHOP
"I Am in Need of Music"
Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music without the idea is simply music; the idea without the music is prose from its very definitiveness.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
"Letter to Mr. B--"
Music is another lady that talks charmingly and says nothing.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Music may appeal to crude and coarse feelings or to refined and noble ones; and in so far as it does the latter it awakens the higher nature and works an effect, though but a transitory effect, of a beneficial kind. But the primary purpose of music is neither instruction nor culture but pleasure; and this is an all-sufficient purpose.
HERBERT SPENCER
Facts and Comments
True life, was something that was stored in music. True life was kept safe in the lines of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin while you went out in the world and met the obligations required of you.
ANN PATCHETT
Bel Canto
I don't read music. And my mom is this classically trained person, and I went the other way. And I think it's helped me write songs that I wouldn't have written if I were going at the technical way. Because they go, "Oh, you can't go from this chord to that chord. It's not the way you're supposed to do it."
MARIAH CAREY
Larry King Live, Dec. 19, 2002
Everything is music for the born musician.
ROMAIN ROLLAND
Jean-Christophe
When time itself shall be no more / And all things in confusion hurl'd / Music shall then exert it's power / And sound survive the ruins of the world / Then saints and angels shall agree / In one eternal jubilee / All Heaven shall echo with their hymns divine / And God himself with pleasure see / The whole creation in a chorus join.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Song for St. Cecilia's Day
Music ... is the frozen tapioca in the ice sheet of History.
DONALD BARTHELME
"Conversations with Goethe"
Music, the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heaven we have here below.
JOSEPH ADDISON
A Song for St. Cecilia's Day
The music, yearning like a God in pain.
JOHN KEATS
"The Eve of Saint Agnes"
The emotional impact of music is so incommensurate with what people can say about it, and that seems to be very illustrative of something fundamental--that very powerful emotional effects often can’t be articulated. You know something’s happened to you but you don’t know what it is.
ADAM PHILLIPS
The Paris Review, spring 2014
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.
JOHN MILTON
Arcades
I wish my life had background music so I could understand what the hell is going on.
ANONYMOUS
Who first said that music hath charms to soothe the savage breast, I know not; but that it is true, I am sure. Who has not felt the melting power of music, and stopped to listen to the sweet strains of some simple melody which has brought, or nearly brought, tears to his eyes? Where is the breat that has not been stirred by the cathedral organ, and choristers echoing their sacred strains through the aisles and corridors, and dying away, as it were, in heaven above? Will not the sweet but simple ballad of "Home, Sweet Home," when sung in a foreign land, wake memories from the dead, and melt the hardest heart; rouse every grand, noble, unselfish, and patriotic feeling in the breast, and carry the hearer thousands of miles across the storm-tossed oceans and seas that separate him from his own beloved country, the dwelling place of those near and dear to him, the model land of his heart, the resting place of his sires, his adored and honored fatherland.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On Music", Short Essays
If music thus carries us to heaven, it is because music is harmony, harmony is perfection, perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
Words must ever sound so feeble in attempting to express the magic power of melody.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.
PLATO
The Republic