Music Inspirational Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Music Inspirational. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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Without music, life would be a mistake.
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Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols)
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And, in the end The love you take is equal to the love you make.
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Paul McCartney (The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics)
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None but ourselves can free our minds.
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Bob Marley
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I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful one-hundred percent!
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Dr. Seuss (Horton Hatches the Egg)
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Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together.
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AnaΓ―s Nin
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Live your truth. Express your love. Share your enthusiasm. Take action towards your dreams. Walk your talk. Dance and sing to your music. Embrace your blessings. Make today worth remembering.
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Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
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If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
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Martin Luther King Jr.
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How to stop time: kiss. How to travel in time: read. How to escape time: music. How to feel time: write. How to release time: breathe.
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Matt Haig (Reasons to Stay Alive)
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Music has always been a matter of Energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel. I have always needed Fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio.
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Hunter S. Thompson
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I'm not saying I'm gonna change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world.
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Tupac Shakur
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Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends.
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Alphonse de Lamartine
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We are the music-makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams. World-losers and world-forsakers, Upon whom the pale moon gleams; Yet we are the movers and shakers, Of the world forever, it seems.
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Arthur O'Shaughnessy (Poems of Arthur O'Shaughnessy)
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You've got this life and while you've got it, you'd better kiss like you only have one moment, try to hold someone's hand like you will never get another chance to, look into people's eyes like they're the last you'll ever see, watch someone sleeping like there's no time left, jump if you feel like jumping, run if you feel like running, play music in your head when there is none, and eat cake like it's the only one left in the world!
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C. JoyBell C.
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He not busy being born is busy dying.
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Bob Dylan
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I’ve come to the conclusion that people who wear headphones while they walk, are much happier, more confident, and more beautiful individuals than someone making the solitary drudge to work without acknowledging their own interests and power.
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Jason Mraz
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When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.
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Henry David Thoreau
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Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: β€œIt’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to." [MovieMaker Magazine #53 - Winter, January 22, 2004 ]
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Jim Jarmusch
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.. a friend is someone who inspires, who challenges, who sends you in search of some truer sense of yourself..
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Steve LΓ³pez (The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music)
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Music is an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible delights of the soul.
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Johann Sebastian Bach
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My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.
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Martin Luther
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[BURR] I am the one thing in life I can control.
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Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton: The Revolution)
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Too much sanity may be madness β€” and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!
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Dale Wasserman (Man of La Mancha: A Musical Play)
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You have to, take a deep breath. and allow the music to flow through you. Revel in it, allow yourself to awe. When you play allow the music to break your heart with its beauty.
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Kelly White
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It was the moment I realized what music can do to people, how it can make you hurt and feel so good all at once.
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Nina LaCour (Hold Still)
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Life isn’t a music player where you choose whats being played, it is a radio where you have to enjoy whats being played.
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Zayn Malik
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I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes. After that I liked jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way. I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened.
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Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality (Paperback))
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There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard. There are not more than five primary colours, yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever been seen. There are not more than five cardinal tastes, yet combinations of them yield more flavours than can ever be tasted.
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Sun Tzu (The Art of War)
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Most people die with their music still locked up inside them.
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Benjamin Disraeli
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Ignore all hatred and criticism. Live for what you create, and die protecting it.
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Lady Gaga
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The heart may freeze, or it can burn. The pain will ease and I can learn. There is no future, there is no past. I live this moment as, my last.
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Jonathan Larson (Rent: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical)
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I refuse to believe that Hendrix had the last possessed hand, that Joplin had the last drunken throat, that Morrison had the last enlightened mind.
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Patti Smith
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If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to Β­music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people's words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient.
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Hilary Mantel
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It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.
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Albert Einstein
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When she listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred inside her. A liquid ache spread under her skin, and she walked out of the world like a witch.
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Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things)
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When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be. And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be. Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be. Whisper words of wisdom, let it be. And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree, there will be an answer, let it be. For though they may be parted there is still a chance that they will see, there will be an answer. let it be. Let it be, let it be, ..... And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light, that shines on me, shine until tomorrow, let it be. I wake up to the sound of music, mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be. Let it be, let it be, .....
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Paul McCartney
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Why do you write like you're running out of time?
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Lin-Manuel Miranda
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Even in the far future, never forget the you of right now Wherever you are right now, you’re just taking a break
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BTS
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And the worst part is before it gets any better we're heading for a cliff. And in the free fall I will realize I'm better off when I hit the bottom
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Hayley Williams
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Oh what a wonderful soul so bright inside you. Got power to heal the sun’s broken heart, power to restore the moon’s vision too.
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Aberjhani (Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player)
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A choir is made up of many voices, including yours and mine. If one by one all go silent then all that will be left are the soloists. Don’t let a loud few determine the nature of the sound. It makes for poor harmony and diminishes the song.
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Vera Nazarian (The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration)
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Count your blessings. Once you realize how valuable you are and how much you have going for you, the smiles will return, the sun will break out, the music will play, and you will finally be able to move forward the life that God intended for you with grace, strength, courage, and confidence.
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Og Mandino
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It bewildered Ig, the idea that a person could not be interested in music. It was like not being interested in happiness.
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Joe Hill (Horns)
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Forget your voice, sing! Forget your feet, dance! Forget your life, live! Forget yourself and be!
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Kamand Kojouri
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Sameron adion aso I shall sing a sweeter song tomorrow
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Theocritus
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Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm.
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Thomas Merton (No Man Is an Island)
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So many people will tell you ”no”, and you need to find something you believe in so hard that you just smile and tell them ”watch me”. Learn to take rejection as motivation to prove people wrong. Be unstoppable. Refuse to give up, no matter what. It’s the best skill you can ever learn.
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Charlotte Eriksson
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Music, my rampart and my only one.
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Edna St. Vincent Millay
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Girls have got balls. They're just a little higher up, that's all.
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Joan Jett
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The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
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Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
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I think there is a song out there to describe just about any situation.
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Criss Jami (Killosophy)
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Imma be what I set out to be without a doubt undoubtedly.
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Eminem
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Then came the healing time, hearts started to shine, soul felt so fine, oh what a freeing time it was.
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Aberjhani (Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player)
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[WASHINGTON] It’s alright, you want to fight, you’ve got a hunger I was just like you when I was younger Head full of fantasies of dyin’ like a martyr? [HAMILTON] Yes [WASHINGTON] Dying is easy, young man. Living is harder
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Lin-Manuel Miranda
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A song and a smile from someone I cared about could be enough to distract me from all that darkness, if only for a little while.
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Ransom Riggs (Hollow City (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children, #2))
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Wrists are for bracelets, not for cutting.
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Kellin Quinn
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When we feel, a kind of lyric is sung in our heart. When we think, a kind of music is played in our mind. In harmony, both create a beautiful symphony of life.
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Toba Beta (My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut)
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So I forced myself to step out of my comfort zone and go out and connect with people. I realised that no one knew me here. I could become whoever I wanted to be for these people, and that became my courage.
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Charlotte Eriksson (Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps)
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Try and fail, but never fail to try!
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Jared Leto
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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.
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Thomas Carlyle
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Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing.
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John Erskine
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Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream.
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John Lennon
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When you touch the celestial in your heart, you will realize that the beauty of your soul is so pure, so vast and so devastating that you have no option but to merge with it. You have no option but to feel the rhythm of the universe in the rhythm of your heart.
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Amit Ray (Meditation: Insights and Inspirations)
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And if you think you're alone. Put on my music. Because I'm going to be there for you.
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Demi Lovato
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Heaven help the roses if the bombs begin to fall
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Stevie Wonder
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By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.
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Thomas Merton
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If love what you can't have, then you have to love what you've got
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Ed Sheeran
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Life is a lot like jazz - it's best when you improvise.
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George Gershwin
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Curiosity and passion are the enemies of anxiety. Even when I fell into anxiety, if I get curious enough about something outside of me it can help pull me out. Music, art, film, nature, conversation, words. Find passion as large as your fear. The way out of your mind is via the world.
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Matt Haig (The Comfort Book)
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No matter who we are, no matter what our circumstances, our feelings and emotions are universal. And music has always been a great way to make people aware of that connection. It can help you open up a part of yourself and express feelings you didn't know you were feeling. It's risky to let that happen. But it's a risk you have to take-because only then will you find you're not alone.
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Josh Groban
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Most people live and die with their music still unplayed. They never dare to try.
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Mary Kay Ash
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Music is everywhere. It’s in the air between us, waiting to be sung.
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David Levithan (How They Met, and Other Stories)
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Music isn’t just heard, it is felt.
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Kelly Clarkson
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Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone's very heart. There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food.
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Anne Lamott (Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith)
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You'll have a good, secure life when being alive means more to you than security, love more than money, your freedom more than public or partisan opinion, when the mood of Beethoven's or Bach's music becomes the mood of your whole life … when your thinking is in harmony, and no longer in conflict, with your feelings … when you let yourself be guided by the thoughts of great sages and no longer by the crimes of great warriors … when you pay the men and women who teach your children better than the politicians; when truths inspire you and empty formulas repel you; when you communicate with your fellow workers in foreign countries directly, and no longer through diplomats...
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Wilhelm Reich (Listen, Little Man!)
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Don’t say you don’t have enough time or enough money to change the world. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Gandhi, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci and Jesus Christ.
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Shannon L. Alder
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The library smells like old books β€” a thousand leather doorways into other worlds. I hear silence, like the mind of God. I feel a presence in the empty chair beside me. The librarian watches me suspiciously. But the library is a sacred place, and I sit with the patron saint of readers. Pulsing goddess light moves through me for one moment like a glimpse of eternity instantly forgotten. She is gone. I smell mold, I hear the clock ticking, I see an empty chair. Ask me now and I'll say this is just a place where you can't play music or eat. She's gone. The library sucks.
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Laura Whitcomb (A Certain Slant of Light (Light, #1))
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You were born together, and together you shall be for evermore...But let there be spaces in your togetherness...Love one another, but make not a bond of love. Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not of the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
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Kahlil Gibran
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The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that God is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond, and music is in both the flowing violin and the water dripping from the drainage pipe. Yes, God is under the porch as well as on top of the mountain, and joy is in both the front row and the bleachers, if we are willing to be where we are.
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Mark Nepo (The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have)
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It's sad if people think that's (homemaking) a dull existance, [but] you can't just buy an apartment and furnish it and walk away. It's the flowers you choose, the music you play, the smile you have waiting. I want it to be gay and cheerful, a haven in this troubled world. I don't want my husband and children to come home and find a rattled woman. Our era is already rattled enough, isn't it?
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Audrey Hepburn
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I am a free soul, singing my heart out by myself no matter where I go and I call strangers my friends because I learn things and find ways to fit them into my own world. I hear what people say, rearrange it, take away and tear apart until it finds value in my reality and there I make it work. I find spaces in between the cracks and cuts where it feels empty and there I make it work.
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Charlotte Eriksson
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Some of us go full circle. Some of us blindly go nowhere. The circle doesn’t have to be very large to make a point, kick your ass and/or be entertaining. Remember that and stay light. Even the deaf know good music when they hear it.
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Jason Mraz
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My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens: men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain fields down yonder? [...] The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back to the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wheat in the wind...
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Antoine de Saint-ExupΓ©ry
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I think that our lyrics are definitely dark, but I know for a fact that we pull our inspiration from a million different influences. We listened to everything growing up. Our music isn't just 'opera metal' or 'gothic pop' it's just Evanescence.
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Evanescence
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What most of us must be involved in--whether we teach or write, make films, write films, direct films, play music, act, whatever we do--has to not only make people feel good and inspired and at one with other people around them, but also has to educate a new generation to do this very modest thing: change the world.
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Howard Zinn (Artists in Times of War and Other Essays (Open Media))
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My wife's the reason anything gets done, she nudges me towards promise by degrees. She is a perfect symphony of one our son is her most beautiful reprise. We chase the melodies that seem to find us until they're finished songs and start to play. When senseless acts of tragedy remind us that nothing here is promised--not one day. This show is proof that history remembers. We live in times when hate and fear seem stronger. We rise and fall and light from dying embers--remembrances that hope and love last longer. And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside. I sing Vanessa's symphony. Eliza tells her story. Now, fill the world with music, love, and pride.
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Lin-Manuel Miranda
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There’s a kid in the middle of nowhere who’s sitting there living for Tony performances. Singing and flipping along with the Pippins, and Wickeds, and Kinkys, Matildas, and Mormons's. So we might reassure that kid, and do something to spur that kid, β€˜cause I promise you, all of us up here tonight, we were that kid.
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Neil Patrick Harris
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That is another chamber of my heart that shows no electrical activity - the chamber that used to flicker into life when I saw a film that moved me, or read a book that inspired me, or listened to music that made me want to cry. I closed that chamber myself, for all the usual reasons. And now I seem to have made a pact with some philistine devil: if I don't attempt to re-open it, I will be allowed just enough energy and optimism to get through a working day without wanting to hang myself.
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Nick Hornby (How to Be Good)
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Plus there’s the fact,” he went on, making it clear he didn’t need me to reply anyway, β€œthat music is a total constant. That’s why we have such a strong visceral connection to it, you know? Because a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. No matter what else has changed in you or the world, that one song stays the same, just like that moment. Which is pretty amazing, when you actually think about it.
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Sarah Dessen (Just Listen)
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…You see, my dear friend, I am made up of contradictions, and I have reached a very mature age without resting upon anything positive, without having calmed my restless spirit either by religion or philosophy. Undoubtedly I should have gone mad but for music. Music is indeed the most beautiful of all Heaven's gifts to humanity wandering in the darkness. Alone it calms, enlightens, and stills our souls. It is not the straw to which the drowning man clings; but a true friend, refuge, and comforter, for whose sake life is worth living
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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
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Gmorning! You're gonna make mistakes. You're gonna fail. You're gonna get back up. You're gonna break hearts. You're gonna change minds. You're gonna make noise. You're gonna make music. You're gonna be late, let's GO. Gnight! You're gonna fall down. You're gonna be tested. You're gonna learn about yourself. You're gonna get brave. You're gonna take stands. You're gonna make waves. You're gonna make history. You're gonna need rest, REST UP.
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Lin-Manuel Miranda (Gmorning, Gnight!: Little Pep Talks for Me & You)
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Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery. It is far better to be free, to leave the forts and barricades of fear, to stand erect and face the future with a smile. It is far better to give yourself sometimes to negligence, to drift with wave and tide, with the blind force of the world, to think and dream, to forget the chains and limitations of the breathing life, to forget purpose and object, to lounge in the picture gallery of the brain, to feel once more the clasps and kisses of the past, to bring life's morning back, to see again the forms and faces of the dead, to paint fair pictures for the coming years, to forget all Gods, their promises and threats, to feel within your veins life's joyous stream and hear the martial music, the rhythmic beating of your fearless heart. And then to rouse yourself to do all useful things, to reach with thought and deed the ideal in your brain, to give your fancies wing, that they, like chemist bees, may find art's nectar in the weeds of common things, to look with trained and steady eyes for facts, to find the subtle threads that join the distant with the now, to increase knowledge, to take burdens from the weak, to develop the brain, to defend the right, to make a palace for the soul. This is real religion. This is real worship
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Robert G. Ingersoll (The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. IV)
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Music, to me, is the most beautiful form, and I love film because film is very related to music. It moves by you in its own rhythm. It's not like reading a book or looking at a painting. It gives you its own time frame, like music, so they are very connected for me. But music to me is the biggest inspiration. When I get depressed, or anything, I go "think of all the music I haven't even heard yet!" So, it's the one thing. Imagine the world without music. Man, just hand me a gun, will you?
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Jim Jarmusch
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The gift of the Holy Ghost...quickens all the intellectual faculties, increases, enlarges, expands, and purifies all the natural passions and affections, and adapts them, by the gift of wisdom, to their lawful use. It inspires, develops, cultivates, and matures all the fine-toned sympathies, joys, tastes, kindred feelings, and affections of our nature. It inspires virtue, kindness, goodness, tenderness, gentleness, and charity. It develops beauty of person, form, and features. It tends to health, vigor, animation, and social feeling. It invigorates all the faculties of the physical and intellectual man. It strengthens and gives tone to the nerves. In short, it is, as it were, marrow to the bone, joy to the heart, light to the eyes, music to the ears, and life to the whole being.
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Parley P. Pratt
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I heard the universe as an oratorio sung by a master choir of stars, accompanied by the orchestra of the planets and the percussion of satellites and moons. The aria they performed was a song to break the heart, full of tragic dissonance and deferred hope, and yet somewhere beneath it all was a piercing refrain of glory, glory, glory. And I sensed that not only the grand movements of the cosmos, but everything that had happened in my life, was a part of that song. Even the hurts that seemed most senseless, the mistakes I would have done anything to erase--nothing could make those things good, but good could still come out of them all the same, and in the end the oratorio would be no less beautiful for it.
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R.J. Anderson (Ultraviolet (Ultraviolet, #1))
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It may not feel too classy, begging just to eat But you know who does that? Lassie, and she always gets a treat So you wonder what your part is Because you're homeless and depressed But home is where the heart is So your real home's in your chest Everyone's a hero in their own way Everyone's got villains they must face They're not as cool as mine But folks you know it's fine to know your place Everyone's a hero in their own way In their own not-that-heroic way So I thank my girlfriend Penny Yeah, we totally had sex She showed me there's so many different muscles I can flex There's the deltoids of compassion, There's the abs of being kind It's not enough to bash in heads You've got to bash in minds Everyone's a hero in their own way Everyone's got something they can do Get up go out and fly Especially that guy, he smells like poo Everyone's a hero in their own way You and you and mostly me and you I'm poverty's new sheriff And I'm bashing in the slums A hero doesn't care if you're a bunch of scary alcoholic bums Everybody! Everyone's a hero in their own way Everyone can blaze a hero's trail Don't worry if it's hard If you're not a friggin 'tard you will prevail Everyone's a hero in their own way Everyone's a hero in their...
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Joss Whedon (Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog: The Book)
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I who am blind can give one hint to those who see: Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. And the same method can be applied to the other senses. Hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow. Touch each object as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again. make the most of every sense; glory in the beauty which the world in all the facets of pleasure reveals to you through the several means of contact which Nature provides. But of all the senses, I am sure that sight is the most delightful.
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Helen Keller
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One of the strangest things is the act of creation. You are faced with a blank slateβ€”a page, a canvas, a block of stone or wood, a silent musical instrument. You then look inside yourself. You pull and tug and squeeze and fish around for slippery raw shapeless things that swim like fish made of cloud vapor and fill you with living clamor. You latch onto something. And you bring it forth out of your head like Zeus giving birth to Athena. And as it comes out, it takes shape and tangible form. It drips on the canvas, and slides through your pen, it springs forth and resonates into the musical strings, and slips along the edge of the sculptor’s tool onto the surface of the wood or marble. You have given it cohesion. You have brought forth something ordered and beautiful out of nothing. You have glimpsed the divine.
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Vera Nazarian (The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration)
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Once there was a boy,” said Jace. Clary interrupted immediately. β€œA Shadowhunter boy?” β€œOf course.” For a moment a bleak amusement colored his voice. Then it was gone. β€œWhen the boy was six years old, his father gave him a falcon to train. Falcons are raptors – killing birds, his father told him, the Shadowhunters of the sky. β€œThe falcon didn’t like the boy, and the boy didn’t like it, either. Its sharp beak made him nervous, and its bright eyes always seemed to be watching him. It would slash at him with beak and talons when he came near: For weeks his wrists and hands were always bleeding. He didn’t know it, but his father had selected a falcon that had lived in the wild for over a year, and thus was nearly impossible to tame. But the boy tried, because his father told him to make the falcon obedient, and he wanted to please his father. β€œHe stayed with the falcon constantly, keeping it awake by talking to it and even playing music to it, because a tired bird was meant to be easier to tame. He learned the equipment: the jesses, the hood, the brail, the leash that bound the bird to his wrist. He was meant to keep the falcon blind, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it – instead he tried to sit where the bird could see him as he touched and stroked its wings, willing it to trust him. Hee fed it from his hand, and at first it would not eat. Later it ate so savagely that its beak cut the skin of his palm. But the boy was glad, because it was progress, and because he wanted the bird to know him, even if the bird had to consume his blood to make that happen. β€œHe began to see that the falcon was beautiful, that its slim wings were built for the speed of flight, that it was strong and swift, fierce and gentle. When it dived to the ground, it moved like likght. When it learned to circle and come to his wrist, he neary shouted with delight Sometimes the bird would hope to his shoulder and put its beak in his hair. He knew his falcon loved him, and when he was certain it was not just tamed but perfectly tamed, he went to his father and showed him what he had done, expecting him to be proud. β€œInstead his father took the bird, now tame and trusting, in his hands and broke its neck. β€˜I told you to make it obedient,’ his father said, and dropped the falcon’s lifeless body to the ground. β€˜Instead, you taught it to love you. Falcons are not meant to be loving pets: They are fierce and wild, savage and cruel. This bird was not tamed; it was broken.’ β€œLater, when his father left him, the boy cried over his pet, until eventually his father sent a servant to take the body of the bird away and bury it. The boy never cried again, and he never forgot what he’d learned: that to love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be the one destroyed.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
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The suffering or the bad memories are as important as the good memories, and the good experiences. If you sort of, can imagine life as being 99% of the time quite linear, and most of the time you're in a state of neither happiness nor sadness. And then that 1% of the time you experience moments of very crystalised happiness, or crystalised sadness, or loneliness or depression. And I believe all of those moments are very pertinant. It's like I said to you, that for me it's mostly those crystalised moments of melancholy which are more inspirational to me. And in a strange way they become quite beautiful in their own way. Music that is sad, melancholic, depressing, is in a kind of perverse way more uplifting. I find happy music extremely depressing, mostly - mostly quite depressing. It's particularly this happy music that has no spirituality behind it - if it's just sort of mindless party music, it'd be quite depressing. But largely speaking, I was the kind of person that responds more to melancholia, and it makes me feel good. And I think the reason for this is, I think if you respond strongly to that kind of art, it's because in a way it makes you feel like you're not alone. So when we hear a very sad song, it makes us realise that we do share this kind of common human experience, and we're all kind of bonded in sadness and melancholia and depression.
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Steven John Wilson
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The night following the reading, Gansey woke up to a completely unfamiliar sound and fumbled for his glasses. It sounded a little like one of his roommates was being killed by a possum, or possibly the final moments of a fatal cat fight. He wasn’t certain of the specifics, but he was sure death was involved. Noah stood in the doorway to his room, his face pathetic and long-suffering. β€œMake it stop,” he said. Ronan’s room was sacred, and yet here Gansey was, twice in the same weak, pushing the door open. He found the lamp on and Ronan hunched on the bed, wearing only boxers. Six months before, Ronan had gotten the intricate black tattoo that covered most of his back and snaked up his neck, and now the monochromatic lines of it were stark in the claustrophobic lamplight, more real than anything else in the room. It was a peculiar tattoo, both vicious and lovely, and every time Gansey saw it, he saw something different in the pattern. Tonight, nestled in an inked glen of wicked, beautiful flowers, was a beak where before he’d seen a scythe. The ragged sound cut through the apartment again. β€œWhat fresh hell is this?” Gansey asked pleasantly. Ronan was wearing headphones as usual, so Gansey stretched forward far enough to tug them down around his neck. Music wailed faintly into the air. Ronan lifted his head. As he did, the wicked flowers on his back shifted and hid behind his sharp shoulder blades. In his lap was the half-formed raven, its head tilted back, beak agape. β€œI thought we were clear on what a closed door meant,” Ronan said. He held a pair of tweezers in one hand. β€œI thought we were clear that night was for sleeping.” Ronan shrugged. β€œPerhaps for you.” β€œNot tonight. Your pterodactyl woke me. Why is it making that sound?” In response, Ronan dipped the tweezers into a plastic baggy on the blanket in front of him. Gansey wasn’t certain he wanted to know what the gray substance was in the tweezers’ grasp. As soon as the raven heard the rustle of the bag, it made the ghastly sound againβ€”a rasping squeal that became a gurgle as it slurped down the offering. At once, it inspired both Gansey’s compassion and his gag reflex. β€œWell, this is not going to do,” he said. β€œYou’re going to have to make it stop.” β€œShe has to be fed,” Ronan replied. The ravel gargled down another bite. This time it sounded a lot like vacuuming potato salad. β€œIt’s only every two hours for the first six weeks.” β€œCan’t you keep her downstairs?” In reply, Ronan half-lifted the little bird toward him. β€œYou tell me.
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Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle, #1))