A Few Quotations About Music, and Where to Find Them

Here are some good reference books for sayings about music. The Slonimsky book is a must-have.

The Music Lovers Quotation Book by David W. Barber

A Dictionary of Musical Quotations by Ian Crofton and Donald Fraser.

For a real classic on idiotic music criticism over the centuries, a must read is:

Nicolas Slonimsky The Lexicon of Musical Invective.

melomane–music lover in French. We have no English equivalent except perhaps musicophile.

Architecture is frozen music

–Goethe

Without music, life would be a mistake

–Nietzsche

Music is no different than opium. Music affects the human mind in a way that makes people think of nothing but music and sensual matters. Music is a treason to the country, a treason to our youth, and we should cut out all this music and replace it with something instructive.

–1979 speech by Ayatollah Khomeini

We don’t play to be seen. I’m addicted to music, not audiences.

–Miles Davis

All arts aspire to the condition of music.

— Walter Pater

Art demands of us that we shall not stand still.

–Beethoven

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy, it is the wine of a new procreation, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for men and makes them drunk with the spirit.

–Beethoven