MUSIC QUOTES III
quotations about music
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.
JOHN MILTON
Arcades
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
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
Words must ever sound so feeble in attempting to express the magic power of melody.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
Toyish airs please trivial ears.
FRANCIS QUARLES
Emblems
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"
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
Every man is full of music; but it is not every man that knows how to bring it out.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Hark to the music! How beneath the strain
Of reckless revelry, vibrates and sobs
One fundamental chord of constant pain,
The pulse-beat of the poet's heart that throbs.
EMMA LAZARUS
"Chopin"
Music is another lady that talks charmingly and says nothing.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
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
What defines someone's music taste is their teens and early 20s. It's that combination of your sexual awakening and the music of the time, it fixes you forever.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
interview, The Quietus, September 23, 2010
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--"
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
JEAN COCTEAU
Le Coq et l'Arlequin
Music is the exaltation of the mind derived from things eternal, bursting forth in sound.
THOMAS AQUINAS
Summa Theologica
I wish my life had background music so I could understand what the hell is going on.
ANONYMOUS
Music recalls a state of feeling, and not merely a series of incidents. When we listen to the long-forgotten melody, we do not review the scenes and actions of our childhood in succession, but we become for the moment children once again.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
Music, the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heaven we have here below.
JOSEPH ADDISON
A Song for St. Cecilia's Day
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