The tune I remember, could I but keep the words.

—Virgil, 38 BC

Music is our myth of the inner life.

—Susanne K. Langer, 1942

Without music life would be a mistake.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1889

I never practice, I always play.

—Wanda Landowska, 1953

Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don’t take it too seriously.

—Henry Miller, 1945

Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together.

—Anaïs Nin, 1939

Music today is nothing more than the art of performing difficult pieces.

—Voltaire, 1759

I would delight in music, but the music is discordant.

—Xie Lingyun, c. 425

Dance tunes are always right.

—Dylan Thomas, 1936

Music sweeps by me as a messenger / Carrying a message that is not for me.

—George Eliot, 1868

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

—Noël Coward, 1930

If one hears bad music, it is one’s duty to drown it by conversation.

—Oscar Wilde, 1890

He who sings frightens away his ills.

—Miguel de Cervantes, 1605

If you have any soul worth expressing, it will show itself in your singing.

—John Ruskin, 1865

All of the great musicians have borrowed from the songs of the common people.

—Antonín Dvořák, 1893

The god of music dwelleth out of doors.

—Edith M. Thomas, 1887

All the daughters of music shall be brought low.

—Ecclesiastes, c. 400 BC