*** There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats. - Albert Schweitzer *** Wagner's music is better than it sounds. - Mark Twain ***I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to. - Elvis Presley *** Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung. - Voltaire *** Music is the universal language of mankind. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow *** Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing. - John Erskine *** 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 creates order out of chaos: for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent, melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous. - Yehudi Menuhin *** It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself. - J.S. Bach *** Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it. - John Lennon *** Bach gave us God's Word. Mozart gave us God's laughter. Beethoven gave us God's fire. God gave us Music that we might pray without words. - quote outside an opera house *** Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except the best. - Henry Van Dyke *** Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains. - John Philip Sousa *** A good composer does not imitate; he steals. - Igor Stravinsky *** You don't need any brains to listen to music. - Luciano Pavarotti *** I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the manmade sound never equalled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig. - Alfred Hitchcock *** I'd rather be a musician than a rock star. - George Harrison *** Every songwriter lives to have at least one song that a cab driver who asks 'You write anything I know?' will recognize. - Rupert Holmes *** There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead. - Arthur Honegger *** Critics don't buy records. They get 'em free. - Nat King Cole *** The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes — ah, that is where the art resides. - Artur Schnabel *** I sat down at the piano and my hands began to browse over the keys. Then something happened. I felt as though I could reach out and touch God. I found myself playing a melody, one I'd never heard or played before, and words came into my head -- they just seemed to fall into place... - Thomas A. Dorsey *** Music -- the greatest good that mortals know, and all of heaven we have below. - Joseph Addison *** Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music. - Sergei Rachmaninov *** Never hate a song that's sold a half million copies. - Irving Berlin *** As an artist I come to sing, but as a citizen, I will always speak for peace, and no one can silence me in this. - Paul Robeson