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
1.) One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.
Bob Marley
2.) Music is a weapon in the war against unhappiness.
Jason Mraz
3.) Music is the universal language of mankind.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
4.) Music is like a dream. One that I cannot hear.
Ludwig van Beethoven
5.) Music is the divine messenger between heaven and the human. Beethoven
Explore our best quotes about change.

Best Music Quotes
6.) Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.
Victor Hugo
7.) Without jazz, life would be a mistake.
Boris Vian
8.) Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
Berthold Auerbach
9.) If words are the lyrics and laughter the melody, then a relationship becomes a symphony.
Nicholas Sparks
Short Music Quotes
10.) Music should be your escape.
Missy Elliott
11.) Great melody over great riffs is, to me, the secret of it all.
Steven Tyler
12.) Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart.
Pablo Casals
13.) Jazz is something you have to feel, something you have to live.
Ray Brown
14.) Who hears music, feels his solitude peopled at once.
Robert Browning
Discover our best Shel Silverstein quotes, lyrics, and poems.

Country Music Quotes
15.) Country music is still your grandpa’s music, but it’s also your daughter’s music.
Shania Twain
16.) You have to grow up, start paying the rent, and have your heart broken before you understand country.
Emmylou Harris
17.) 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
18.) 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
19.) Three chords and the truth – that’s what a country song is. There is a lot of heartache in the world.
Willie Nelson
20.) I still feel like that 17-year-old-kid that fell in love with country music.
Dierks Bentley
21.) I was introduced to country music around a campfire on a farm.
Gavin DeGraw

Inspirational Music Quotes
22.) 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
23.) Every soul is a melody which needs renewing.
Stephane Mallarme
24.) How is it that music can, without words, evoke our laughter, our fears, our highest aspirations?
Jane Swan
25.) A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.
Gustav Mahler
26.) 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
27.) Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.
Martin Luther
Good Music Quotes
28.) Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.
Confucius
29.) Music is the strongest form of magic.
Marilyn Manson
30.) Next to the word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.
Martin Luther
31.) Music is a world within itself, with a language we all understand.
Stevie Wonder
32.) Immerse yourself in nature’s symphony
and let your senses burst with joy.
Tom Brown, Jr.
33.) Music is a way to dream together and go to another dimension.
Cecilia Bartoli
34.) There are two means of refuge from the misery of life — music and cats.
Albert Schweitzer
Chime In
35.) A Jazz man should be saying what he feels: humor, sadness, joy all the things that humans have.
Bob Brookmeyer
36.) Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
37.) Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die.
Paul Simon
38.) After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
Aldous Huxley
39.) To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself; incredible and inconceivable.
Aaron Copland
40.) 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
41.) 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
42.) 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
43.) Life is a song; love is the music.
Unknown
44.) This love is difficult, but it’s real.
Taylor Swift – See Inspirational Taylor Swift Quotes and Sayings.
45.) Love is friendship set to music.
Jackson Pollock
46.) Love is all you need.
The Beatles
47.) Our love is like a song,
But you won’t sing along.
Demi Lovato
48.) Love me like you loved me when you loved me
And you didn’t have to try.
Luke Bryan
49.) 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
50.) Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.
Plato
51.) 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
52.) The music is not in the notes but in the silence between.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (One of the editor’s favorite music quotes)
53.) Music is what tells us that the human race is greater than we realize.
Napoleon Bonaparte
54.) You can chase a Beethoven symphony all your life and never catch up.
Andre Previn
55.) Music is God’s little reminder that there’s something else besides us in this universe.
Robin Williams
56.) 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
57.) A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.
Leopold Stokowski
58.) Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.
E. M. Forster
59.) Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
Maya Angelou
Funny Music Quotes
60.) All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.
Louis Armstrong
61.) Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
Steve Martin
62.) I smash guitars because I like them.
Pete Townshend
63.) All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.
Frank Zappa
64.) Jazz is a beautiful woman whose older brother is a policeman.
Sid Caesar
65.) If in the afterlife there is not music, we will have to import it.
Domenico Cieri
66.) Do it again on the next verse, and people think you meant it.
Chet Atkins
67.) A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion but doesn’t.
Tom Waits
68.) To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.
Igor Stravinsky

Rock and Roll Music Quotes
69.) When we die, we will turn into songs, and we will hear each other and remember each other.
Rob Sheffield
70.) 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
71.) Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thoughts.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
72.) 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
73.) Lose your dream; you lose your mind.
Rolling Stones
74.) A good song takes on more meaning as the years pass by.
Bruce Springsteen
75.) Finally content with a past I regret, I’ve found you find strength in your moments of weakness.
Rascal Flatts
76.) Well, I know when you’re around cause I know the sound I know the sound of your heart.
The 1975
77.) 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
78.) 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
79.) Without music, life would be a mistake
Friedrich Nietzsche
80.) Music is love, love is music, music is life, and I love my life. Thank you, and good night.
A. J. McLean
81.) Without music, life is a journey through a desert.
Pat Conroy
82.) Music can change the world because it can change people.
Bono
83.) 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
84.) Some people have lives; some people have music.
John Green
85.) True country music is honesty, sincerity, and real-life to the hilt.
Garth Brooks
86.) Music is the heart of life. She speaks love. Without it, there is no possible good. And with it, everything is beautiful.
Franz Liszt
87.) Without music, life would be a blank to me.
Jane Austen
88.) 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
89.) Where words leave off, music begins.
Heinrich Heine
90.) We are each but a quarter note in a grand symphony.
Guy Laliberte
91.) Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.
Lao Tzu
92.) Jazz stands for freedom.
Dave Brubeck
93.) Music is my religion.
Jimi Hendrix
94.) 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
95.) Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.
Robert Fripp
96.) Jazz is about being in the moment.
Herbie Hancock
97.) Where words fail, music speaks.
Hans Christian Andersen
98.) The song is ended, but the melody lingers on.
Irving Berlin
99.) Music is the shorthand of emotion.
Leo Tolstoy
Inspiring Music Quotes
100.) Music acts like a magic key to which the most tightly closed heart opens.
Maria von Trapp
101.) Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit and never dies.
Edward Bulwer Lytton
102.) A great song should lift your heart, warm the soul and make you feel good.
Colbie Caillat
103.) Music is the moonlight in the gloomy night of life.
Jean Paul Friedrich Richter
104.) Music is an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible delights of the soul.
Johann Sebastian Bach
105.) Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends.
Alphonse de Lamartine
106.) The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.
H. Auden
107.) Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace , abolishing strife.
Kahlil Gibran
Awesome Music Quotes
108.) When I hear music, I fear no danger.
Henry David Thoreau
109.) Music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common.
Sarah Dessen
110.) I haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
Igor Stravinsky
111.) We are the music-makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.
Arthur O’Shaughnessy
112.) Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
113.) 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
114.) Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.
Ludwig van Beethoven
Cool Music Quotes
115.) Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.
Frank Zappa
116.) 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
117.) Music is well said to be the speech of angels.
Thomas Carlyle
118.) 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
119.) Music is the soundtrack of your life.
Dick Clark
Music Quotes that Touch the Heart
120.) 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
121.) Music is the moonlight in the gloomy night of life.
Jean Paul Friedrich Richter
122.) Life is one grand, sweet song so start the music.
Ronald Reagan
123.) 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
124.) Music, my rampant and my only one.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
125.) Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.
Haruki Murakami
By Michael O’Halloran

Michael O’Halloran founded Greeting Card Poet in 2014 and has worked as its publisher and editor ever since. He has co-authored four books on kids’ trivia and four on coaching. Previously, Michael was the president of Magnetic Poetry. He has invented and brought to market over 75 new gift and toy products, most of which involve wordplay. Mike is married and a father of four daughters.
Mike enjoys a wide range of music including Motown, rock, soul, and country.
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