. . . man is a musical being.  His origin is in the spoken Word.  By sound was he sustained and by music he evolved.  One day he will recognize music as a vital factor in the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual evolution of the whole human race. 

-- Corinne Heline 

Music is the art of all the invisible things that are real.  Art, emotion, spiritual essence, consciousness -- these things are hard to prove.  Music helps you to focus on your sound.

-- Wynton Marsalis 

Music is the harmonious voice of creation; an echo of the invisible world.

-- Giuseppe Mazzini 

There tend to be two different drives that lead young people toward music.  One is that music provides an escape; it takes you away from the unhappiness or torture of where you are and makes you feel less alienated -- you believe there is a place you fit in somewhere else.  The other is a sort of transcendent, spiritual feeling in the purity of music.

-- Michael Stipe 

A true music, that is to say, spiritual, a music which may be an act of faith; a music which may touch upon all subjects without ceasing to touch upon God; an original music, in short, whose language may open a few doors, take down some yet distant stars.

-- Olivier Messiaen 

It is music that welds spiritual and sensual, that can convey ecstasy free of guilt, faith without dogma, love as homage, and a person at home with nature and the infinite.

-- Yehudi Menuhin 

 Music is the language of the spirit.  It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife.

-- Khalil Gibran

Music is very spiritual, it has the power to bring people together.

-- Edgar Winter 

Music can also be a sensual pleasure, like eating food or sex.  But its highest vibration for me is that point of taking us to a real understanding of something in our nature which we can very rarely get at.  It is a spiritual state of oneness.

-- Terry Riley

When the human being hears music, he has a sense of wellbeing, because these tones harmonize with what he has experienced in the world of his spiritual home.

-- Rudolf Steiner

There's a very basic, human, non-verbal aspect to our need to make music and use it as part of our human expression.  It doesn't have to do with body movements, it doesn't have to do with articulation of language, but with something spiritual.

-- John Towner Williams 

There is no complete spiritual life without music, for the human soul has regions which can be illuminated only by music.

-- Zoltan Kodaly 

My music is the spiritual expression of what I am -- my faith, my knowledge, my being . . . When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hangups . . . I want to speak to their souls.

-- John Coltrane 

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun

Let us march on till victory is won.

-- James Weldon Johnson

 

In my own life, while I have continually striven for musical excellence in all I do, music for me is but a means of grace, to reach people's souls, both the performer and the listener.  Our art must be in service to others.

-- Anton Armstrong

 

Making music together is not just about the music.  The real impact of choral singing in person is that we are doing this to delve into the souls of each singer.  That is so we feel connected to one another and to build community. . . . We seek to build bridges to bring people together into community.

-- Anton Armstrong

 

Body, mind, spirit, voice.  It takes the whole person to sing and rejoice.

-- Helen Kemp

 

And your body is the harp of your Soul, and it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it, or confused sounds.

 -- Kahlil Gibran

 

If you look deep enough you will see music . . . The heart of nature being everywhere music.

-- Thomas Carlyle.

 

Art and music are two of the most powerful healing forces in the Universe.

-- Roseanne Cash

 

Don't only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the Divine.

-- Ludwig van Beethoven

 

Music is what tells us that the human race is greater than we realize.

-- Napoleon Bonaparte

 

Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit, and never dies.

-- Edward Bulwer Lytton

 

Music is the moonlight in the gloomy night of life.

-- Jean Paul Friedrich Richter

 

Music has healing power.  It has the ability to take people out of themselves for a few hours.

-- Elton John

 

Music can change the world because it can change people.

-- Bono

 

The only truth is music.

-- Jack Kerouac

 

Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.

-- Haruki Murakami

 

Music is my higher power. 

-- Oliver James

 Music brings a healing element to worship.  It provides joy and allows us to process feelings of anger, fear and doubt so we can then move to a space of hope and faith.

-- Jim Rindelaub

 Music acts like a magic key, to which the most tightly closed heart opens.

-- Maria von Trapp

 Music gives color to the air of the moment.

-- Karl Lagerfeld

 Music is what tells us that the human race is greater than we realize.

-- Napoleon Bonaparte

 Philosophy is the highest music.

-- Plato

 

Music is the great uniter.  An incredible force.  Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common.

-- Sarah Dessen

 

Without music, life would be a blank to me.

-- Jane Austen

 Music is the tool to express life -- and all that makes a difference.

-- Herbie Hancock

Some days there won't be a song in your heart.  Sing anyway.

-- Emory Austin 

 Wake up, live your life and sing the melody of your soul.

-- Amit Ray

 Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.

-- Robert G. Ingersoll

 Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.

-- Sergei Rachmaninoff

 Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart.

-- Pablo Casals

 To send light into the darkness of men's hearts -- such is the duty of the artist.

-- Robert Schumann

 Music is the moonlight in the gloomy night of life.

-- Jean Paul Friedrich Richter

 Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.

-- Maya Angelou

 Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.

-- Lao Tzu

 Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit and never dies.

-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton

 

     I believe that in each life there is a spiritual line, an upward curve, and all that adheres to and strenghtens this line is our real life -- the rest is but as chaff falling from us as our souls progress.  Such a spiritual line is my Art.

-- Isadora Duncan

 

     It would seem as if it were a very difficult thing to explain in words, but when I stood before my class of even the smallest and poorest children and said:  'Listen to the music with your soul.  Now, while listening, do you not feel an inner self awakening deep within you -- that it is by its strength that your head is lifted, that your arms are raised, that you are walking slowly toward the light?' they understood.  This awakening is the first step in the dance, as I conceive it.

-- Isadora Duncan

 

     A woman is singing in the valley.  The shadows falling blot her out, but her song spreads over the fields. . . .  

Her song, as pure as water filled with light, cleanses the plain and rinses the mean air of day in which men hate.  From the throat of the woman who keeps on singing, day rises nobly evaporating toward the stars.

-- Gabriela Mistral (translation by Langston Hughes)

 

Singing is breath that is larger than yourself, so it joins you with space, with community, with other realms and our deepest inside places.  You are joining your strand to everyone else's, weaving something with the whole, and this extends the community outward into a force bigger than itself.

-- Ann Lamott

 

As the Source strikes the note,
Humanity sings --
The Holy Spirit is our harpist,
And all strings
Which are touched in Love
Must sound.

-- Mechtild of Magdeburg