"The sense of musical delight, with the power of producing it, is a gift of the imagination." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

”People who make music together cannot be enemies, at least not while the music lasts." - Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)

"The main thing the public demands of a composer is that he be dead."
- Arthur Honegger (1892-1955)

“You cannot imagine how it spoils one to have been a child prodigy.”
- Franz Liszt (1811-86)

"I only know two pieces---one is 'Clair de Lune' and the other one isn't."
- Victor Borge (1909-2000)

"Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end."
- Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

"Music played at weddings always reminds me of the music played for soldiers before they go into battle." - Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)

“Without music, life would be an error.” Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to."
- Elvis Presley (1935-1977)

"Hell is full of musical amateurs." - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"If only the whole world could feel the power of harmony."
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

“The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides.” - Artur Schnabel (1882-1951)

"Life is for the living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music
Death a note unsaid."
- Langston Hughes (1901-1967)

"The only escapes from the miseries of life are music and cats."
- Albert Schweitzer (1865-1975)

"Life is a lot like jazz - at its best when you improvise."
- George Gershwin (1898-1937)

"Let this be my epitaph: 'The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.'" - Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

"Architecture is frozen music." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

"The only winner of The War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky." - Solomon Short (unknown)

"People compose for many reasons; to become immortal; because the pianoforte happens to be open; because they want to become a millionaire; because of the praise of friends; because they have looked into a beautiful pair of eyes; for no reason whatever." - Robert Schumann (1810-1856)

“Playing the piano is a way of expressing oneself that is perhaps even more fulfilling than writing or speaking.” - Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994)

“Jazz is the result of the energy stored up in America.” - George Gershwin

“If I do not practice for one day, I know it; if I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it; if I don’t practice for three days, the audience knows it.”
- Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860-1941)

“A good composer does not imitate; he steals.” - Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

"Certainly ‘jazz’ takes up a goodly share of the American’s time – too much, to my way of thinking. ‘Jazz’, like the well-known little girl with the curl, when it is good is very, very good, and when it is bad, it is horrid. The greater part of it is very bad. Its popularity is the result of the avowed tastes of those people who care only for music which is strongly rhythmical...And this wonderful art will, I am positive, some day disappear – when the dancer tires of it – unwept, unhonored, and unsung. It is raging now, to be sure, and has a considerable following, but does not truly represent America to the world; it does reflect a certain phase of the world’s life (not America’s alone) since it employs primitive rhythms which excite the basic human impulses. It will endure just as long as people hear it with their feet instead of their brains!”
- John Philip Sousa (1854-1932) *

*This quote always amazes me because as "The March King," didn't Sousa compose music designed to get people excited and moving???