Musical Quotes Through The Ages

Plato (427-347 BC) defined music as "the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue." He also said, "Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything." Throughout history, his words have been proven true. On this feast day of St. Cecilia, patron of musicians, I offer you other worthy quotes to enforce his definition:

"Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without."

Confucius (551-479 BC)

"Do you know that our soul is composed of harmony?"

Leonardo DaVinci (1452-1519)

"He who sings scares away his woes."

Miguel Cervantes (1547-1616)

"What passion cannot music raise and quell!"

John Dryden (1631-1700)

"Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents."

Ludwig van Beethoven (1712-1773)

"Music is the occult metaphysical exercise of a soul not knowing that it philosophizes."

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)

"All deep things are song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls!"

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

"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 (1795-1881)

"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent."

Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

"Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit, and never dies."

Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)

(And to think he never wrote a worthy sentence.)

"Music is the universal language of mankind."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

"It is incontestable that music induces in us a sense of the infinite and the contemplation of the invisible."

Victor de LaPrade (1812-1883)

"There is no truer truth obtainable/By Man than comes of music."

Robert Browning (1812-1889)

"There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music."

George Eliot (1819-1880)

"There is nothing in the world so much like prayer as music is."

William P. Merrill (1832-1902)

"Without music life would be a mistake."

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory."

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) 

"Truly to sing, that is a different breath."

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

“To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.”

Aaron Copland (1900-1990)