"When words fail, music speaks." Hans Christian Anderson

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." Berthold Auerbach

"Singing is speech made musical, while dancing is the body made poetic." Ernst Bacon

"I wish you music to help with the burdens of life, and to help you release your happiness to others." Ludwig van Beethoven

"Virtue is the strong stem of man's nature, and music is the blossoming of virtue." Confucius

"Wouldst thou know if a people be well governed, if its laws be good or bad? Examine the music it practices." Confucius

"Conducting is a real sport. You can never guarantee what the results are going to be so there's always an element of chance. That's what keeps it exciting." Aaron Copland

"For a well rounded life one must have music." George Eastman

"My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require." Sir Edward Elgar

"Music. . .is the best mind-trainer on the list." Charles W. Eliot

"Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing." John Erskine

"Music expresses that which cannot be said, and which cannot be suppressed." Victor Hugo

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

"If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo 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." Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Music is the universal language of mankind." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Music - even in the most harrowing moment - ought never to offend the ear, but should always remain music, which desires to give pleasure." Mozart

"Music is to the mind as air is to the body." Plato

"If you want to please only the critics, don't play too loud, too soft, too fast, too slow." Arturo Toscanini

"A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)

"Music raises and enobles whatever it expresses." von Goethe

"One ought, every day, to hear a song, read a fine poem, and, if possible, to speak a few reasonable words." von Goethe

"All music is singing. The ideal is to make the orchestra play like singers." Bruno Walter

"Use what talents you have; the woods would have little music if no birds sang their song except those who sang best." Reverend Oliver G. Wilson