Quotes & Sayings About Music Expresses What Words Cannot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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