Music Quotes: Short, Funny, Inspirational

Our music quotes collection covers classical, country, jazz, rock and roll, love songs, and more. Music is known as the great unifier as all cultures share in their love of a good song.

We’ve collected some of the best insights on music, music-making, and songs from the likes of performers, composers, and songwriters.

We hope we’ve hit the right note, so you don’t have to play it by ear when thinking of a great quotation. Enjoy!

Quotes about Music

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.
Bob Marley

Music is a weapon in the war against unhappiness.
Jason Mraz

Music is the universal language of mankind.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Music is like a dream. One that I cannot hear.
Ludwig van Beethoven

Music quotes.

Best Music Quotes

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.
Victor Hugo

Without jazz, life would be a mistake.
Boris Vian

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
Berthold Auerbach

If words are the lyrics and laughter the melody, then a relationship becomes a symphony.
Nicholas Sparks

See 37 Michael Buble quotes.

Short Music Quotes

Music should be your escape.
Missy Elliott

Great melody over great riffs is, to me, the secret of it all.
Steven Tyler

Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart.
Pablo Casals

Jazz is something you have to feel, something you have to live.
Ray Brown

music is love quote

Country Music Quotes

Country music is still your grandpa’s music, but it’s also your daughter’s music.
Shania Twain

You have to grow up, start paying the rent, and have your heart broken before you understand country.
Emmylou Harris

It was probably storytelling before it was songwriting, as far as country music is concerned. It’s fun to be a part of that and tip the hat to that. You know, and keep that tradition alive.
Chris Stapleton

Country music is the people’s music. It just speaks about real life and about truth, and it tells things how they really are.
Faith Hill

Three chords and the truth – that’s what a country song is. There is a lot of heartache in the world.
Willie Nelson

I still feel like that 17-year-old-kid that fell in love with country music.
Dierks Bentley

I was introduced to country music around a campfire on a farm.
Gavin DeGraw

the music sounds better with you

Inspirational Music Quotes

I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy, but most importantly, music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning.
Plato

Every soul is a melody which needs renewing.
Stephane Mallarme

How is it that music can, without words, evoke our laughter, our fears, our highest aspirations?
Jane Swan

A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.
Gustav Mahler

Life, he realized, was much like a song. In the beginning, there is mystery, in the end, there is confirmation, but it’s in the middle where all the emotion resides to make the whole thing worthwhile.
Nicholas Sparks

Good Music Quotes

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

Music is the strongest form of magic.
Marilyn Manson

Next to the word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.
Martin Luther

Music is a world within itself, with a language we all understand.
Stevie Wonder

Immerse yourself in nature’s symphony
and let your senses burst with joy.
Tom Brown, Jr.

Music is a way to dream together and go to another dimension.
Cecilia Bartoli

Chime In

A Jazz man should be saying what he feels: humor, sadness, joy all the things that humans have.
Bob Brookmeyer

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.
Ludwig Van Beethoven

Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die.
Paul Simon

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
Aldous Huxley

To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself; incredible and inconceivable.
Aaron Copland

Music is a language that doesn’t speak in particular words. It speaks in emotions, and if it’s in the bones, it’s in the bones.
Keith Richards

It’s like stepping into a river and joining the flow. Every moment in the river has its song.
Michael Jackson

Rolling Stones quotation image

Music is Love Sayings

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

Life is a song; love is the music.
Unknown

This love is difficult, but it’s real.
Taylor Swift – See Inspirational Taylor Swift Quotes and Sayings.

Love is friendship set to music.
Jackson Pollock

Love is all you need.
The Beatles

Our love is like a song,
But you won’t sing along.
Demi Lovato

Love me like you loved me when you loved me
And you didn’t have to try.
Luke Bryan

The story of life is quicker than the wink of an eye,
The story of love is hello and goodbye…until we meet again.
Jimi Hendrix

Mozart quote on music

Famous Music Sayings

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.
Plato

If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.
Charles Darwin

The music is not in the notes but in the silence between.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (One of the editor’s favorite music quotes)

Music is what tells us that the human race is greater than we realize.
Napoleon Bonaparte

You can chase a Beethoven symphony all your life and never catch up.
Andre Previn

Music is God’s little reminder that there’s something else besides us in this universe.
Robin Williams

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music, I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.
Albert Einstein

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

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.
E. M. Forster

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
Maya Angelou

Funny Music Quotes

All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.
Louis Armstrong

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
Steve Martin

I smash guitars because I like them.
Pete Townshend

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.
Frank Zappa

Jazz is a beautiful woman whose older brother is a policeman.
Sid Caesar

If in the afterlife there is not music, we will have to import it.
Domenico Cieri

Do it again on the next verse, and people think you meant it.
Chet Atkins

A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion but doesn’t.
Tom Waits

To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.
Igor Stravinsky

Steve Martin quote on talking about music image

Rock and Roll Music Quotes

When we die, we will turn into songs, and we will hear each other and remember each other.
Rob Sheffield

When I look into your eyes, I still get weak, and when I’m this close to you, I just can’t speak, And it’s hard to keep my hands to myself When I know I could never love anybody else.
Gary Allan

Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thoughts.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

It’s not what you take when you leave this world behind you. It’s what you leave behind you when you go.
Randy Travis

Lose your dream; you lose your mind.
Rolling Stones

A good song takes on more meaning as the years pass by.
Bruce Springsteen

Finally content with a past I regret, I’ve found you find strength in your moments of weakness.
Rascal Flatts

Well, I know when you’re around cause I know the sound I know the sound of your heart.
The 1975

You can write songs in New York because it’s not always perfect. To write a good song, things can’t be perfect.
Tom Odell

You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, Know when to walk away and know when to run.
Kenny Rogers

Music is Life

Without music, life would be a mistake
Friedrich Nietzsche

Music is love, love is music, music is life, and I love my life. Thank you, and good night.
A. J. McLean

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.
Pat Conroy

Music can change the world because it can change people.
Bono

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.
Plato

Some people have lives; some people have music.
John Green

True country music is honesty, sincerity, and real-life to the hilt.
Garth Brooks

Music is the heart of life. She speaks love. Without it, there is no possible good. And with it, everything is beautiful.
Franz Liszt

Without music, life would be a blank to me.
Jane Austen

Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.
George Eliot

Tip: These music quotes make great captions on Instagram and Facebook.

Musical Phrases

Where words leave off, music begins.
Heinrich Heine

We are each but a quarter note in a grand symphony.
Guy Laliberte

Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.
Lao Tzu

Jazz stands for freedom.
Dave Brubeck

Music is my religion.
Jimi Hendrix

The only truth is music.
Jack Kerouac

Note: If you have any suggestions for music quotes you’d like to see included, please let us know via the contact page. Thanks.

Quotations that Strike the Right Note

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.
Robert Fripp

Jazz is about being in the moment.
Herbie Hancock

Where words fail, music speaks.
Hans Christian Andersen

The song is ended, but the melody lingers on.
Irving Berlin

Music is the shorthand of emotion.
Leo Tolstoy

Inspiring Music Quotes

Music acts like a magic key to which the most tightly closed heart opens.
Maria von Trapp

Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit and never dies.
Edward Bulwer Lytton

A great song should lift your heart, warm the soul and make you feel good.
Colbie Caillat

Music is the moonlight in the gloomy night of life.
Jean Paul Friedrich Richter

Music is an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible delights of the soul.
Johann Sebastian Bach

Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends.
Alphonse de Lamartine

The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.
H. Auden

Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace , abolishing strife.
Kahlil Gibran

Awesome Music Quotes

When I hear music , I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.
Henry David Thoreau

Music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common.
Sarah Dessen

I haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
Igor Stravinsky

We are the music-makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.
Arthur O’Shaughnessy

Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.
Ludwig van Beethoven

Cool Music Quotes

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.
Frank Zappa

If Music is a Place — then Jazz is the City, Folk is the Wilderness, Rock is the Road, and Classical is a Temple.
Vera Nazarian

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.
Thomas Carlyle

To live is to be musical, starting with the blood dancing in your veins. Everything living has a rhythm. Do you feel your music?
Michael Jackson

Music is the soundtrack of your life.
Dick Clark

Music Quotes that Touch the Heart

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Music is the moonlight in the gloomy night of life.
Jean Paul Friedrich Richter

Life is one grand, sweet song so start the music.
Ronald Reagan

Music… will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Music, my rampant and my only one.
Edna St. Vincent Millay

Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.
Haruki Murakami

By Mike O’Halloran

Mike, our Greeting Card Poet founder, enjoys a wide range of music including Motown, rock, soul, and country.

You’re on the Music Quotes page.

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