Music Expresses Quotes & Sayings

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

The true significance, then, of absolute music is that it expresses human personality at its finest moments, adequately, beautifully and spiritually, by the medium of sound. And therefore our finest music is one of the supreme possessions of the world ; for there is nothing greater than great personality. — J. Alfred Johnstone

Music expresses feeling, that is to say, gives shape and habitation to feeling, not in space but in time. To the extent that music has a history that is more than a history of its formal evolution, our feelings must have a history too. Perhaps certain qualities of feeling that found expression in music can be recorded by being notated on paper, have become so remote that we can no longer inhabit them as feelings, can get a grasp of them only after long training in the history and philosophy of music, the philosophical history of music, the history of music as a history of the feeling soul. — J.M. Coetzee

There is a subject - there is a research that says a man thinks about sex every 12 seconds. And so when an artist expresses something that's sexual in music it is a reflection of our reality. If we want that reality changed, then we have to do things that affect the core. — Russell Simmons

The dignity of art probably appears most eminently with music since it does not have any material that needs to be discounted. Music is all form and content and elevates and ennobles everything that it expresses. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

When you write music that expresses doubt or concern, or talks about some of the darker things that a developing human goes through, people will come out of the woodwork to listen to someone else say it out loud. — Tyler Joseph

Indeed, man only exists insofar as he expresses himself. Music does it in musical ideas. — Anton Webern

Music expresses both in lyrics and in tune something of the orientation of the composer and author as to what the truth of religion is and how we ought to practice it — Robert Godfrey

Show me a man who over-elaborates and I will show you a great man! What is called their 'overelaboration' is my meat: it is the sign of struggle, it is struggle itself with all the fibers clinging to it, the very aura and ambiance of the discordant spirit. And when you show me a man who expresses himself perfectly I will not say that he is not great, but I will say that I am unattracted ... I miss the cloying qualities. When I reflect that the task which the artist implicitly sets himself is to overthrow existing values, to make of the chaos about him an order which is his own, to sow strife and ferment so that by the emotional release those who are dead may be restored to life, then it is that I run with joy to the great and imperfect ones, their confusion nourishes me, their stuttering is like divine music to my ears. — Henry Miller

What Music expresses is eternal, infinite, and ideal; she expresses not the passion, love, desire, of this or that individual in this or that condition, but Passion, Love, Desire itself, and in such infinitely varied phases as lie in her unique possession and are foreign and unknown to any other tongue ... So ... Here's to Victory, gained by our higher sense over the worthlessness of the vulgar! To Love, which crowns our courage ... To the day, to the night! ... And three cheers for Music ... — Richard Wagner

Everybody expresses themselves in different ways. Some people write it down, some people paint it. Some people express it in the way they speak. We just express our feelings through music. — Isaac Hanson

As polishing expresses the vein in marble, and grain in wood, so music brings out what of heroic lurks anywhere. The hero is the sole patron of music. — Henry David Thoreau

In its own unique and indefinable manner, music indirectly communicates the joys of life along with the pains and terrors overwhelming humanity. The universal language of music quantities the human experience, its range of variation encapsulates the scale of humankind's exuberance for living as well as expresses our apprehension of suffering and death. Because music articulates the quintessence of life and yokes a myriad of human events into an expressible format, music is a critical act. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I cannot conceive of music that expresses absolutely nothing. — Bela Bartok

Music - not just the lyrics, but the music itself - expresses confused or illicit passions: rage, lust, envy, frustration, channeling these energies and creating an outlet for them. — Sarah Churchwell

There are a lot of influences from different countries in my music. For example, I chose the guitar in my music, I think that it is a feminine instrument, so when I do not sing, the music expresses my voice. — Paulina Rubio

Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all. Music expresses itself. — Igor Stravinsky

People usually complain that music is so ambiguous, and what they are supposed to think when they hear it is so unclear, while words are understood by everyone. But for me it is exactly the opposite ... what the music I love expresses to me are thoughts not to indefinite for words, but rather too definite. — Felix Mendelssohn

My proposition is that music is at the heart of what 'The Magic Flute' means: that it's Mozart's music, not the words, we should be attending to. Music expresses what can't be expressed otherwise. — Simon McBurney

Music expresses those thoughts and words, which have no form but have longing for love. — Debasish Mridha

I wanted to appeal to people who've never really listened to hip-hop or really given it a chance before. I've also tried to incorporate all my favorite lifestyle things in the music. Of course, 'Fashion Killa' is one of peoples' favorites because it just expresses how much I like fashion. — ASAP Rocky

I grew up on popular music, and rock-and-roll expresses very deep feelings of those people who don't have a lot. — Bobbie Ann Mason

Music expresses what cannot be put into words I like to think, and I think the band makes a good go at it. — Steven Tyler

In a society of increasingly mass-produced, assembly-line entertainment, where every individual is treated like an empty pitcher to be filled from above, jazz retains something of the spirit of the handicrafts of yesteryear. The print of the human spirit warms it. Deep down, jazz expresses the enforced & compassionate attitudes of a minority group and may well appeal to us because we all have blue moods and, in a fundamental sense, none of us is wholly free. — Marshall W. Stearns

Music is an art that expresses the inexpressible. It rises far above what words can mean or the intelligence define. Its domain is the imponderable and impalpable land of the unconscious. — Charles Munch

Music has its own internal logic. It is like the logic of a dream, clear in its own terms but not necessarily in everyday terms. Sometimes it expresses something you can describe in words, but not always. — Tamas Vasary

The inexpressible depth of music, so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from its pain ... Music expresses only the quintessence of life and of its events, never these themselves. — Oliver Sacks

Music expresses first of all sadness rather than joy. — Ignacy Jan Paderewski

How can one express the indefinable sensations that one experiences while writing an instrumental composition that has no definite subject? It is a purely lyrical process. It is a musical confession of the soul, which unburdens itself through sounds just as a lyric poet expresses himself through poetry ... As the poet Heine said, 'Where words leave off, music begins.' — Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

As to ... old composers like Schubert or Beethoven, I imagine that, while modern music expresses both feeling, thought and imagination, they expressed pure feeling. And you know all day sitting at work, eating, walking, etc., you have hundreds of feelings that can't be put into words. And that is why I think that in a sense music is the highest of the arts, because it really begins where the others leave off. — C.S. Lewis

Music begins where words leave off. Music expresses the inexpressible. If there is a Kingdom of Heaven, it lies in music. — Edward Abbey

Music expresses - you express yourself with music. — Rita Ora

Music is the answer to the mystery of life. The most profound of all the arts, It expresses the deepest thoughts of life. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words. — Robert G. Ingersoll

Music expresses longing and love and joy better than any piece of dialogue you can ever write. — Marsha Norman

Notes and chords have become my second language and, more often than not, that vocabulary expresses what I feel when language fails me. The guitar is my conscience, too - whenever I've lost my way, it's brought me back to center; whenever I forget, it reminds me why I'm here. — Slash, Anthony Bozza