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

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
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

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

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

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

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

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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