Playing Music Quotes

• The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Music, Beauty, Art

  17 Copy quote

• Master your instrument. Master the music. And then forget all that bullshit and just play.

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Play, Bullshit

  79 Copy quote

• There is no truer truth obtainable by Man than comes of music

  Robert Browning

  Music, Men, Piano

  Robert Browning (2008). “The Agamemnon of Aeschylus, La Saisiaz, Etc.”, p.357, Wildside Press LLC

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• The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Funny, Music, Joy

  30 Copy quote

• The saxophone is actually a translation of the human voice, in my conception.  All you can do is play melody.  No matter how complicated it gets, it's still a melody.

  Stan Getz

  Music, Play, Voice

  7 Copy quote

• My definition of an intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger.

  Billy Connolly

  Funny, Music, Witty

  141 Copy quote

• Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  Music, Wine, Piano

  93 Copy quote

• Music can noble hints impart, Engender fury, kindle love, With unsuspected eloquence can move, And manage all the man with secret art.

  Joseph Addison

  Music, Art, Moving

  Joseph Addison (1868). “The Works of Joseph Addison”, p.425

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• My whole trick is to keep the tune well out in front. If I play Tchaikovsky, I play his melodies and skip his spiritual struggle.

  Liberace

  Music, Spiritual, Struggle

  20 Copy quote

• No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.

  W. H. Auden

  Funny, Music, People

  Quoted in Time, 29 Dec 1961.

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• And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, and silently steal away.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Music, Night, Poetry

  "The Day Is Done" st. 11 (1844)

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• There is music in all things, if men had ears.

  Lord Byron

  Music, Men, Ears

  Lord Byron (2015). “Don Juan”, p.316, Sheba Blake Publishing

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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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• 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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• Music is moonlight in the gloomy night of life.

  Jean Paul

  Funny, Music, Night

  104 Copy quote

• Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.

  Duke Ellington

  Music, Marriage, Work

  Music Is My Mistress act 8 "Pedestrian Minstrel" (1973)

  23 Copy quote

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• If one plays good music, people don't listen and if one plays bad music people don't talk.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Music, Witty

  Oscar Wilde (2004). “The Best of Oscar Wilde: Selected Plays and Writings”, p.257, Penguin

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• The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides.

  Artur Schnabel

  Funny, Music, Art

  Quoted in Chicago Daily News, 11 June 1958

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• It is incontestable that music induces in us a sense of the infinite and the contemplation of the invisible.

  Victor de Laprade

  Music, Piano, Infinite

  45 Copy quote

• Music is the universal language of mankind.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Music, Appreciation, Teacher

  1835 OutreMer. Also attributed to Christopher North (1865-1954).

  64 Copy quote

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• Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Music, Lying, Tired

  'The Lotos-Eaters' (1832) Choric Song, st. 1

  74 Copy quote

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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

  13 Copy quote

• Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memories.

  Oscar Wilde

  Music, Art, Memories

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.88, Wordsworth Editions

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• It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Music, Taken, Play

  Quoted in N Hentoff Jazz Is (1978).

  64 Copy quote

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• Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.

  Confucius

  Music, Wisdom, Art

  65 Copy quote