Quotes About Music

I never heardSo musical a discord, such sweet thunder.

As sweet and musicalAs bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair;And when Love speaks, the voice of all the godsMakes heaven drowsy with the harmony.

Under the greenwood treeWho loves to lie with me,And turn his merry noteUnto the sweet bird's throat,Come hither, come hither, come hither:Here shall he seeNo enemyBut winter and rough weather.

I am never merry when I hear sweet music.

The lark, the herald of the morn.

How sour sweet music isWhen time is broke and no proportion kept!So is it in the music of men's lives.

Since once I sat upon a promontory,And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's backUttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,That the rude sea grew civil at her song,And certain stars shot madly from their spheresTo hear the sea-maid's music.

Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?Sweets with sweet war not, joy delights in joy.

I have a reasonable good ear in music: let us have the tongs and the bones.

This music crept by me upon the waters,Allaying both their fury, and my passion,With its sweet air.

Makes a swanlike end,Fading in music.

If music be the food of love, play on;Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,The appetite may sicken, and so die.That strain again! it had a dying fall:O! it came o'er my ear like the sweet soundThat breathes upon a bank of violets,Stealing and giving odor!

Music from the spheres.

Except I be by Silvia in the night,There is no music in the nightingale.

He makes sweet music with th' enamell'd stones.

The isle is full of noises,Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.Sometimes a thousand twangling instrumentsWill hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep,Will make me sleep again.

To purge melancholy.

Still harping on my daughter.

The horn, the horn, the lusty hornIs not a thing to laugh to scorn.

I can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs.

This music mads me: let it sound no more.

The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. The motions of his spirit are dull as night, and his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted.

The lines of poetry, the period of prose, and even the texts of Scripture most frequently recollected and quoted, are those which are felt to be preeminently musical.

No subsection of a piece is too humble to merit our curiosity and serious attention. It may be literally one note (Did I feel relaxed and confident landing on it?) or two notes (Have I truly experienced the space between them%). We build mastery by integrating all these small units.