Famous Quotes & Sayings

Lord Byron

There's music in the sighing of a reed; There's music in the gushing of a rill; There's music in all things, if men had ears; The earth is but the music of the spheres.

Lord Byron

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

Lord Chesterfield

Sculpture and painting are very justly called liberal arts; a lively and strong imagination, together with a just observation, being absolutely necessary to excel in either; which, in my opinion, is by no means the case of music, though called a liberal art, and now in Italy placed even above the other two--a proof of the decline of that country.

Lord Chesterfield

If you love music hear it; go to operas, concerts, and pay fiddlers to play to you; but I insist upon your neither piping nor fiddling yourself. It puts a gentleman in a very frivolous, contemptible light; brings him into a great deal of bad company; and takes up a great deal of time, which might be much better employed.

Mahalia Jackson

Gospel music in those days of the early 1930s was really taking wing. It was the kind of music colored people had left behind them down South and they liked it because it was just like a letter from home.

Mahalia Jackson

If you don't like Louis Armstrong, you don't know how to love.

Mahalia Jackson

A great influence in my life was the sanctified or Holiness churches...Everybody in there sang and they clapped and stomped heir feet and sang with their whole body... Their music was so strong and expressive, it used to bring tears to my eyes.

Mahalia Jackson

Anybody singing the blues is in a deep pit yelling for help.

Mahalia Jackson

Without a song, each day would be a century.

Mahatma Gandhi

... there are chords in every human heart. If we only knew how to strike the right chord, we would bring out the music.

Gavin Bryars

Like an apparently strict musical form it breaks the five minute whole into its structural parts - a descriptive preamble, the action of taking the cards, the development of the cards' manipulation and the revelation of what has been achieved.

Gavin Bryars

The virtuoso element in jazz playing, all those very fast runs in the upper extremes, simply doesn't appeal to me. That's why I don't want to make my concerto "virtuosic" in the sense of a technical show-off. I want a beautiful sound and a melodic and lyrical line. I am more interested in the way someone can play musically.

Ornette Coleman

The human being receives the pleasure from music, not from the argument over what it is.

Ornette Coleman

I'm interested in music, not in my image. If someone plays something fantastic, that I could never have thought of, it makes me happy to know it exists.

Ornette Coleman

The idea is more important than the style you're playing in.

Ornette Coleman

Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.

Omar Khayyam

Oh, the brave Music of a distant drum!

Oliver Wendell Holmes

A few can touch the magic string, and noisy fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them!

Oliver Sacks

About 10 percent of the hearing impaired get musical hallucinations, and about 10 percent of the visually impaired get visual hallucinations.

Oliver Sacks

Music is part of being human.

Oliver Sacks

The power of music to integrate and cure. . . is quite fundamental. It is the profoundest nonchemical medication.

Olive Schreiner

I am always thirsting for beautiful, beautiful, beautiful music. I wish I could make it. Perhaps there isn't any music on earth like what I picture to myself.

Novalis

Every disease is a musical problem; every cure is a musical solution.

Novalis

The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist.

Emilie Autumn

Perfume was first created to mask the stench of foul and offensive odors... Spices and bold flavorings were created to mask the taste of putrid and rotting meat... What then was music created for? Was it to drown out the voices of others, or the voices within ourselves? I think I know.

Emile M. Cioran

Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.

Emile M. Cioran

Thinking should be like musical meditation. Has any philosopher pursued a thought to its limits the way Bach or Beethoven develop and exhaust a musical theme? Even after having read the most profound thinkers, one still feels the need to begin anew. Only music gives definitive answers.

Emily Dickinson

This World is not Conclusion. A Sequel stands beyond- Invisible, as Music- But positive, as Sound.

Elliott Smith

There's always that argument to make - that you're in better company historically if people don't understand what you're doing.

Elle Varner

One of my biggest musical influences is definitely Ella Fitzgerald as a vocalist.

Ella Fitzgerald

The fabulous places I've been, wonderful things that've happened, great people I've met ought to make a story.

Ella Fitzgerald

When we were at the Apollo, Holiday was a block away. I asked her for her autograph.

Ella Fitzgerald

Music is the universal language ... it brings people closer together.