Classic Music Quotes

• A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.

  Leopold Stokowski

  Inspirational, Music, Art

  Leopold Stokowski's address to an audience at Carnegie Hall, as quoted in The New York Times, May 11, 1967.

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• Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune.

  Kin Hubbard

  Music, Thinking, Tunes

  18 Copy quote

• I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else.

  Lily Tomlin

  Inspirational, Funny, Humor

  6 Copy quote

• Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom.

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Jazz And Life, Boundaries

  "Bird: the legend of Charlie Parker". Book by Robert George Reisner, p. 27, 1977.

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• Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  Music, Writing, Thank God

  Letter to Ferdinand Ries, 20 Dec. 1822

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

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Inspirational, Romantic

  'Twelfth Night' (1601) act 1, sc. 1, l. 1

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• If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.

  Gustav Mahler

  Funny, Music, Expression

  Letter to Max Marschalk, March 26, 1896.

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• No matter what culture you're from, everyone loves music.

  Billy Joel

  Music, Healing, Matter

  Interview with Anthony DeCurtis, www.rollingstone.com. November 06, 1986.

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• Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Funny, Music, Witty

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• If music be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it; that surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die.

  William Shakespeare

  Music, Food, Unrequited Love

  'Twelfth Night' (1601) act 1, sc. 1, l. 1

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• Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.

  Mark Twain

  Music, Witty, Humorous

  Autobiography (published in 1924).

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• You can't possibly hear the last movement of Beethoven's Seventh and go slow. (Oscar trying to talk his way out of a speeding ticket)

  Oscar Levant

  Music, Trying, Movement

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

  Joseph Addison

  Music, Wisdom, Heaven

  'A Song for St Cecilia's Day'

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• They tell me Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

  Edgar Wilson Nye

  Music, Sound, Opera

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• Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.

  John Philip Sousa

  Music, Feet, Free Jazz

  John Philip Sousa (2010). “Six marches”, p.52, A-R Editions, Inc.

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• I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity.

  Billy Joel

  Music, Healing, Thinking

  Interview with Anthony DeCurtis, www.rollingstone.com. November 06, 1986.

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• Why waste money on psychotherapy when you can listen to the B Minor Mass?

  Michael Torke

  Funny, Music, Listening

  64 Copy quote

• If anyone has conducted a Beethoven performance, and then doesn't have to go to an osteopath, then there's something wrong.

  Simon Rattle

  Music, Piano, Composer

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• Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

  Pat Conroy

  Music, Journey, Desert

  Pat Conroy (1995). “Beach Music”, Nan A. Talese

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• Music expresses that which cannot be put into words.

  Victor Hugo

  Music, Sound And Music, Musical Life

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• Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Inspirational, Music, Angel

  Thomas Carlyle (1888). “Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: Collected and Republished (first Time, 1839; Final, 1869)”

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• You are the music while the music lasts.

  T. S. Eliot

  Music, Dope, Jazz And Life

  Four Quartets "The Dry Salvages" pt. 5 (1941)

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• Country music is three chords and the truth.

  Harlan Howard

  Music, Country, Inspiration

  "Country Scribe Harlan Howard Dies" by Andrew Dansby, www.rollingstone.com. March 5, 2002.

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• There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.

  Thomas Beecham

  Funny, Music, Two

  In Harold Atkins and Archie Newman Beecham Stories (1978) p. 27

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• 

  I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It's something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music.

  Billy Joel

  Inspirational, Motivational, Music

  FaceBook post by Billy Joel from Aug 19, 2013

  60 Copy quote

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