Quotes
Quotes about 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 sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour!
The setting sun, and music at the close,
As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,
Writ in remembrance more than things long past.
He makes sweet music with th' enamell'd stones,
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge
He overtaketh in his pilgrimage.
Except I be by Sylvia in the night,
There is no music in the nightingale.
A name unmusical to the Volscians' ears,
And harsh in sound to thine.
How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night,
Like softest music to attending ears!
It will discourse most eloquent music.
As sweet and musical
As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair;
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
The rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid's music.
Makes a swan-like end,
Fading in music.
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here we will sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins.
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
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.
And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes, like the warbling of music) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air.
Sundays observe; think when the bells do chime,
'T is angels' music.
There is music in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument; for there is music wherever there is harmony, order, or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres.
As children gath'ring pebbles on the shore.
Or if I would delight my private hours
With music or with poem, where so soon
As in our native language can I find
That solace?
How charming is divine philosophy!
Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets
Where no crude surfeit reigns.
Sweet bird, that shun'st the noise of folly,
Most musical, most melancholy!
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.
Oh, could you view the melody
Of every grace
And music of her face,
You 'd drop a tear;
Seeing more harmony
In her bright eye
Than now you hear.
Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast,
To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
And waste their music on the savage race.
Some to church repair,
Not for the doctrine, but the music there.
These equal syllables alone require,
Though oft the ear the open vowels tire;
While expletives their feeble aid to join,
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line.
When Music, heavenly maid, was young,
While yet in early Greece she sung.
