quotations about music
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
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Journal Intime
Music attacks my inner ear like an antagonist, it's not my world.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
letter to Christian Goldbach, April 17, 1712
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
Music ... is the frozen tapioca in the ice sheet of History.
DONALD BARTHELME
"Conversations with Goethe"
Music is the link between earth and heaven.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
Music is another lady that talks charmingly and says nothing.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
G. K. CHESTERTON
attributed, The Pleasure Instinct
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"
My earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I've always heard kind of melodies in my head. I remember standing under a piano at my grandmother's house, when the keys of the piano were higher than my head and kind of pressing down on the keys, and then hearing one note and then looking for another one to follow it, because you always -- you know, if you're a musician or if you're a songwriter, somehow when you hear one note, you hear another one.
BONO
interview, Larry King Weekend, Dec. 1, 2002
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
Music is the universal language of mankind -- poetry their universal pastime and delight.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Outre-Mer
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
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
It was by music that the ancient kings gave elegant expression to their joy. By their armies and axes they gave the same to their anger.
CONFUCIUS
The Wisdom of Confucius
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
The music, yearning like a God in pain.
JOHN KEATS
"The Eve of Saint Agnes"
Whenever humans come together for any reason, music is there: weddings, funerals, graduation from college, men marching off to war, stadium sporting events, a night on the town, prayer, a romantic dinner, mothers rocking their infants to sleep ... music is a part of the fabric of everyday life.
DANIEL J. LEVITIN
This Is Your Brain on Music
For me, my voice and music was always an outlet. Growing up in an unstable environment and whatnot, music was my only real escape.
CHRISTINA AGUILERA
Rolling Stone, Aug. 24, 2006
Music may be the activity that prepared our pre-human ancestors for speech communication and for the very cognitive, representational flexibility necessary to become humans.
DANIEL J. LEVITIN
This Is Your Brain on Music