Rachmaninov, Sergei Vassilievich (1873-1943)
"Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music."

Rattle, Sir Simon (1955-)
"If anyone has conducted a Beethoven performance, and then doesn't have to go to an osteopath, then there's something wrong."

Richter, Jean-Paul Johann Paul Friedrich (1763-1825)
"Music is the moonlight in the gloomy night of life."

Rig Veda 5.13.1
"All set for the kindling of the sacred fire, we hymn you, O Lord, with our verses, invoking your powerful grace. In your praise, O Lord, who reach highest heaven, we compose our song, eager to obtain your treasure divine!"

Rogers, Samuel
"The soul of music slumbers in the shell, till waked and kindled by the master's spell; and feeling hearts -- touch them but rightly -- pour a thousand melodies unheard before!"

Rolland, Romain (1866-1944)
"Everything is music for the born musician. Everything that throbs, or moves or stirs, or palpitates . . . everything that is, is music; all that is needed is that it should be heard."

Rorem, Ned (1923-)
"Music lasts by itself and cares not who composed it; nor can music recall the thousand anonymous fingers and mouths which tamper with it, beautifully or badly."

Rossini, Giaocchino Antonio (1792-1868)
"Give me a laundry list and I'll set it to music."

[whilst reminiscing in a letter on "the best time to compose an overture"] "Wait until the evening before opening night. Nothing primes inspiration more than necessity, whether it be the presence of a copyist waiting for your work or the prodding of an impresario tearing his hair. In my time, all the impresarios in Italy were bald at thirty."

Sandburg, Carl (1878-1967)
"Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess what is seen during a moment."

Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)
"Music is the answer to the mystery of life; it is the most profound of all the arts; it expresses the deepest thoughts of life and being in simple language which nonetheless cannot be translated."

Schumann, Robert (1810-1856)
"The musician's art is to send light into the depths of men's hearts."

Schweitzer, Dr. Albert (1875-1965)
"All true and deeply felt music, whether sacred or profane, journey to heights where art and religion can always meet."

Serling, Rod
"It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper."

Seu-ma-tsen
"Music is what unifies."

Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)
"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 south that breathes upon a bank of violets, stealing, and giving odor."

"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."

Shaw, George Bernard (1856-1950)
"Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned."

Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1714-1763)
"Music when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory."

Smith, Sydney (1771-1845)
"Music is the only innocent and unpunished passion."

Sondheim, Stephen (1930-)
"Work is what you do for others . . . art is what you do for yourself."

Sousa, John Philip (1854-1932)
"Jazz will endure just as long as people hear it through their feet instead of their brains."

Spencer, Herbert (1820-1903)
"Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts -- as the one which, more than any other, ministers to human welfare."

St. Martial treatise
"One must know three things if one is to write an organum: how to begin, how to proceed, and how to conclude."

St. Vincent-Millay, Edna
"Music my rampart, and my only one."

Stackton, David
"Our lives would be a lot better set to music."

Steiner, George
"The new sound-sphere is global. It ripples at great speed across languages, ideologies, frontiers and races . . . . The economics of this musical esperanto is staggering. Rock and pop breed concentric worlds of fashion, setting and life-style. Popular music has brought with it sociologies of private and public manner, of group solidarity. The politics of Eden come loud."

Stern, Isaac (1920-)
"Music is not an acquired culture . . . it is an active part of natural life."

Stevens, Wallace (1879-1955)
"Just as my fingers on these keys make music, so the self-same sounds of my spirit make a music, too."

"They said, 'You have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are.' The man replied, 'Things as they are, are changed upon a blue guitar.'"

Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-1894)
"Bright is the ring of words when the right man rings them."

Stokowski, Leopold (1882-1977)
"A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence."

Strauss, Richard (1864-1949)
"It is in learning music that many youthful hearts learn to love."

Stravinsky, Igor Feodorovich (1882-1971)
"A good composer does not imitate; he steals."

Sullivan, Sir Arthur Seymour (1842-1900)
"I am astounded at the wonderful power you have developed -- and terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever." [Edison's recording machine]

Szell, George (1897-1970)
"Music is indivisable. The dualism of feeling and thinking must be resolved to a state of unity in which one thinks with the heart and feels with the brain."

Tagore, Sir Rabindranath (1861-1941)
"Let your life dance lightly on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf."

Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich (1840-1893)
"I have played over the music of that scoundrel Brahms -- what a giftless bastard."

"Truly there would be a reason to go mad were it not for music."

Tennyson, Alfred Lord (1809-1892)
"The city is built to music, and therefore never built at all, and therefore built forever."

Thoreau, Henry David (1817-1862)
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."

"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

Tippett, Sir Michael (1905-1998)
"To create images of vigour for a decadent period, images of calm for one too violent, images of reconciliation for a world torn by divisions, and in an age of mediocrity and shattered dreams, images of abounding, generous, exuberant beauty." [on the purpose of composition]

Toscanini, Arturo (1867-1957)
"If you want to please only the critics, don't play too loud, too soft, too fast or too slow."

Twain, Mark Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910)
"When I'm sad I sing, and then others can be sad with me."

Vinci, Leonardo da (1452-1519)
"Do you know that our soul is composed of harmony?"

Wagner, Richard (1813-1883)
"Music does not express the passions, love or longings of this or that individual in this or that situation; it IS passion, love and longing."

"Music is to the other arts, considered as a whole, what religion is to the church."

Warren, Leonard
"Tenors are noble, pure and heroic and get the soprano is she has not tragically expired before the final curtain. But baritones are born villains in opera. Always the heavy and never the hero -- that's me."

Weber, Carl Maria von (1786-1826)
"What love is to man, music is to the arts and to mankind. music is love itself, -- it is the purest, most ethereal language of passion, showing in a thousand ways all possible changes of colour and feeling; and though true in only a single instance, it yet can be understood by thousands of men -- who all feel differently."

Weill, Kurt (1900-1950)
"I write for today. I don't give a damn about posterity."

Whitehead, Alfred North (1861-1947)
"Music comes before religon, as emotion comes before thought, and sound before sense. What is the first thing you hear when you go into a church? The organ playing."

Whiteman, Paul (1891-1967)
"Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains."

Whitman, Walt (1819-1892)
"All music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments, it is not the violins and the cornets, it is not the oboe nor the beating drums, nor the score of the baritone singer singing his sweet romanza, nor that of the men's chorus, nor that of the woman's chorus, it is nearer and farther than they."

Wilde, Oscar (1854-1900)
"A man can live three days without water but not one without poetry."

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

"Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don't listen; and if one plays bad music, people don't talk."

Willcock, Christopher, S.J.
"The craft of a composer lies in the exercise of certain skills and intuitions whose end product contributes to the inner life of society and enhances it."

Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)
"Hearing often-times the still, sad music of humanity, not harsh nor grating, though of ample power to chasten and subdue."

Zalman, Shneur
"Words are the pen of the heart, but music is the pen of the soul."

Zappa, Frank (1940-1993)
"Most rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read."

"Music in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something."

Zimbabwe Proverb
"If you can walk you can dance. If you can talk you can sing."