Classic Music Quotes

• 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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  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

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  Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

  Steve Martin

  Funny, Music, Dance

  57 Copy quote

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

  Kin Hubbard

  Music, Thinking, Tunes

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• If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn.

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Art, Reality

  Quoted in Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin' to Ya (1955)

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

  Edgar Wilson Nye

  Music, Sound, Opera

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

  Michael Torke

  Funny, Music, Listening

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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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• 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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• Music expresses that which cannot be put into words.

  Victor Hugo

  Music, Sound And Music, Musical Life

  88 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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• Where words fail, music speaks.

  Hans Christian Andersen

  Inspirational, Music, Art

  Hans Christian Andersen (1876). “Stories for the Young”

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• All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.

  Louis Armstrong

  Funny, Music, Song

  Quoted in N.Y. Times, 7 July 1971

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

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  Music, Wisdom, Philosophy

  Ludwig van Beethoven, Friedrich Kerst, Henry Edward Krehbiel (1964). “Beethoven, the Man and the Artist, as Revealed in His Own Words”, p.13, Courier Corporation

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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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