Inspiring-Music-Quotes

Quotes on Teaching

“Asking ‘What’s the best thing that happened today?’ actually forces a certain kind of cheerful retrospection that pulls up from the recent past things….you wouldn’t otherwise thing about.” – Austin Kleon

“An answer can just as easily silence the wonder of inquiry as it can inform the curious.” – Jill Carattini

“Tell me and I will forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I will understand.” – Chinese Proverb

“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” – William Yeats

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” – William Arthur Ward

“Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great many things.  Awaken people’s curiosity.  It is enough to open minds; do not overload them.  Put there just a spark.  If there is some good inflammable stuff, it will catch fire.” – Anatole France

“Send your students home to incubate in confusion.” -Guy Duckworth

“Teach the student first, the music second and the piano third.” -Frances Clark

student is motivated to practice when he leaves his lesson feeling capable“A student is almost always motivated to practice if he leaves his lessons feeling capable”. -Frances Clark

“The good teacher….knows that the best learning environment is always student-centered, never teacher-centered.” -Yvone Enoch and James Lyke

“The teacher, not a set of books, is the determining factor in quality results.” -James Bastien

“Discipline will only teach the techniques – a great teacher gives discipline, motivation and love” -Maury Massler

“I do not believe that we can put into anyone ideas which are not in him
already.  As a rule there is in everyone all sorts of good ideas, ready
like tinder.  But much of this tinder catches fire, or catches it
successfully, only when it meets some flame or spark from the outside,
from some other person.  Often, too, our own light goes out, and is
rekindled by some experience we go through with a fellow man.  Thus we
have each of us cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have
lighted the flame within us.  If we had before us those who have thus
been a blessing to us, and could tell them how it came about, they would
be amazed to learn what passed over from their life to ours.” -Albert Schweitzer

“There is nothing that is a more sure sign of insanity than to do the same thing over and over and expect the results to be different.” -Einstein

Quotes on Learning

best way to learn is to do“Amateurs practice until they get it right.  Professionals practice until it won’t go wrong.”

“There is no such thing as a Difficult Piece.  A piece is either impossible – or it is easy.
The process whereby it migrates from one category to the other is known as practicing.” In “Piano” by Louis Kentner.

“The secret of success is ‘Practice’ — but not just p-r-a-c-t-i-c-e.  Practice slowly and critically — examine it.  Being busy is not the secret of success.” – Lloyd J Reynolds

“There are a million things in music I know nothing about. I just want to narrow down that figure.” – Andre Previn

“Have I a secret about playing the piano? It’s a very simple one. I sit down on the piano stool and make myself comfortable – and I always make sure that the lid over the keyboard is open before I start to play.” – Arthur Schnabel

“Genius is the ability to AVOID WORK by doing it right the first time.”

“It is more important to keep the horse going hard than to always play the exact notes.” -Charles Ives (handwritten comments on a score of the Concord Sonata):

“Never mind the lily-ladybird ears!  Be a Man!  Don’t be afraid to harm the thumb.  Sock the black keys Hard! Help the soft ears walk out!”

“The truth is you can acquire any quality you want by acting as though you already have it.” –Joseph Murph

Quotes on Planning

“Every moment in planning saves 3 or 4 in execution.” – Crawford Greenwalt

“Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future. We scarcely ever think of the present; and if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means; the future alone is our end. So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so.” -Blaise Pascal

“The one human quality that must be developed is self discipline for success. The will power to force yourself to do what you know you should do when you should do it, whether you like it or not, whether you feel like it or not. Success is tons of discipline.”
– Brian Tracy

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”   -Author unknown

“All we can do to prepare rightly for tomorrow is to do the right thing today.” – Wendell Berry

Quotes on Dreaming

Don't compare your start to someone else's middle | ComposeCreate.com“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” -Mark Twain

“The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of a larger idea, never returns to its original size.”  – Oliver Wendell Holmes

“A great painting or symphony or play, doesn’t diminish us, but enlarges us, and we, too, want to make our own cry of affirmation to the power of Creation behind the Universe ..” – Madeleine L’Engle

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

“Only those who can see the Invisible can do the Impossible.” – Michelle Small Wright

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor souls who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” -Theodore Roosevelt

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

“You can’t expect to prevent negative feelings altogether. And you can’t expect to experience positive feelings all the time…The Law of Emotional Choice directs us to acknowledge our feelings but also to refuse to get stuck in the negative ones.”  -Greg Anderson

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours…If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.” – Henry David Thoreau

Quotes on Excelling

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. ” -Aristotle

“Always be eager to learn, no matter how successful you might already be. In the Millionaires’ Club, we sometimes invite a billionaire to come talk to us. He says, ‘You’re doing okay, but come on. How about if you really poured it on!'” – Jim Rohn

“The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little “extra”. Jimmy Johnson

“You don’t have to change that much for it to make a great deal of difference. A few simple disciplines can have a major impact on how your life works out in the next 90 days, let alone in the next 12 months or the next 3 years.” – Jim Rohn

“Most men would rather die than think.  Many do.”  – Bertrand Russell

“Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”  – Winston Churchill

“The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.”  – Warren Buffet

“Little hinges swing big doors.” W. Clement Stone

Quotes on Music

“Music heard so deeply,
that it is not heard at all,
but you are the music
while the music lasts.”
– TS Eliot

“Music lives and breathes to tell us who we are and what we face.  It is a path between ourselves and the infinite.”  – Yehudi Menuhin

“Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.”  – Confucius, c. 500 B.C.

“The greatest respect an artist can pay to music is to give it life.” -Pablo Casals

“The affairs of music ought, somehow, to terminate in the love of the beautiful.” -Plato, the Republic

“If only the whole world could feel the power of harmony.” -Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

“Music is only understood when one goes away singing it and only loved when one falls asleep with it in one’s head, and finds it still there on waking up the next morning.” – Arnold Schoenberg, 1934

“Music is enough for a lifetime – but a lifetime is not enough for music.” – Sergei Rachmaninoff

“A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.” – Benny Green

“Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.” – Thomas Carlyle

“Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” – Red Auerbach

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

“Each of us is climbing a mountain called ‘Music’. The mountain remains, but the climbers are forever changed.” – Suzanne Guy

“True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today.” -George Gershwin

“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order and lends itself to all that is good and just and beautiful.” -Plato

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”

“Music is indivisible.  The dualism of feeling and thinking must be resolved to a state of unity in which one thinks with the heart and feels with the brain.”

Effortlessly
Love flows from God into man,
Like a bird
Who rivers the air
Without moving her wings.
Thus we move in this world
One in body and soul,
Though outwardly separate in form.
As the source strikes the note,
Humanity sings —
The holy spirit is our harpist
And all strings
Which are touched in love
Must sound.
-Mechthild of Magdeburg 1210-1297

May your ears hear and your eyes see!  All is harmony, sound and color.  Seven tones and seven colors intertwine and move around you in eternal nuptials.  There is no silent color.  The universe is a lyre.  There is no invisible sound.  The universe is a prism.  -George Sand — Baroness Aurore Dudevant — 1839

Pay the thunder no mind.
Listen to the birds.
(Eubie Blake)

“One cannot say with words what music says without them.” – Steven Feld

“Is not beauty in music too often confused with something which lets the ears lie back in an easy chair?”  – Charles Ives

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

Quotes on Practicing

The time will pass anywayA beautiful touch, a beautiful legato, will not come by merely wishing for
it.  It will not come by hours of inattentive playing at the keyboard.  It is
very largely a matter of developing your tonal sense, your aesthetic ideals, and
mixing them with your hours of practice.  Try practicing for beauty as well as
practicing for technique.  Technique is worthless in your playing, if it means
nothing more to you than making machines of your hands.  I am confident that
centuries of practice are wasted throughout the world because the element of
beauty is cast aside.  Thousands of pianoforte recitals are given in the great
music centers of the world by aspiring students every year.  They look forward
to great careers.  They play their Liszt Rhapsodies, their Concertos and their
Sonatas, often with the most commendable accuracy, but with very little of the
one great quality which the world wants and for which it holds its highest
rewards–Beauty.  –Josef Lhevinne: Basic Principles in Pianoforte Playing (p. 39)

Quotes on Accomplishing

Say no to almost everything - Warren Buffett“Don’t mistake movement for achievement. It’s easy to get faked out by being busy. The question is: Busy doing what?” – Jim Rohn

“Don’t let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.” — Earl Nightingale, author, speaker

“Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. It is the accumulative
weight of our disciplines and our judgments that leads us to either fortune or failure.” – Jim Rohn

“Setting goals for significant accomplishments you want to achieve in your life, both personal and professional accomplishments, costs you nothing. Failure to set them can cost you plenty. You are smack in the middle of the only life your going to have. You can choose to succeed, or choose to drift; having goals makes the difference.”  -Alec Mackenzie

“You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you do not mind who gets the credit.”  -Harry S. Truman

“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that what is deep inside us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”  -E. E. Cummings

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt. -Shakespeare

Surely nothing is quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all. –Peter Drucker

“The irony of multitasking is that it’s exhausting: when you’re doing two or three things simultaneously, you use more energy than the sum of energy required to do each task independently.  You’re also cheating yourself because your’re not doing anything excellently.  You’re compromising your virtuosity.  In the words of T. S. Elliot, you’re ‘distracted from distractions by distractions’.”  -Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit

“People err who think my art comes easily to me. I assure you, dear friend, nobody has devoted so much time and thought to composition as I. There is not a famous master whose music I have industriously studied through many times.”  – Mozart in a letter to a friend

“Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions.” Elizabeth King, sculptor

“Our calling is therefore the way of being that is both best for us and best for the world.” – David Benner

“What stands in the way becomes the way.” – Marcus Aurelius

Quotes on Writing and Composing

“Inspiration may be a form of super consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness – I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.” – Aaron Copland

“It’s not working (yet). That’s the only reassurance you truly need.” Seth Godin

Writerʼs block is just a symptom of feeling like you have nothing to say, combined with the rather weird idea that you SHOULD feel the need to say something.  Why? If you have something to say, then say it. If not, enjoy the silence while it lasts. The noise will return soon enough. In the meantime, youʼre better off going out into the big, wide world, having some adventures, and refilling your well.  – Hugh MacLeod, from Change This: How to be Creative

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from Inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.” – Carl Jung

“Good decisions require creativity, and creativity requires space.” Emily P. Freeman

“Art is imagination at play in the field of time. Let yourself play.” – Julia Cameron

“Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions.” Elizabeth King, sculptor

“The magic of the creative process is that there is no magic. Trust yourself to show up and do the work.” Seth Godin

“Hoarding your voice [or ideas] is a way to hide from the fear of being insufficient.” – Seth Godin

Quotes on Marketing

“We are here to find meaning. We are here to help other people do the same. Everything else is secondary.  We humans want to believe in our own species. And we want people, companies and products in our lives that make it easier to do so. That is human nature.  Product benefit doesnʼt excite us. Belief in humanity and human potential excites us.  Think less about what your product does, and think more about human potential.  What statement about humanity does your product make?  The bigger the statement, the bigger the idea, the bigger your brand will become. ”  -Hugh MacLeod, from Change This: The Hughtrain

Shopping Cart
Scroll to Top