Here are words for what is beyond words—pointers to the magnificence and mystery that is music.
1
“Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
—Berthold Auerbach
2
“Music is the medicine of the breaking heart.”
—Leigh Hunt
3
“Music is love in search of a word.” —Sidney Lanier
4
“Music fills the infinite (space) between two souls.”
—Rabindrinath Tagore
5
“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.”
—Thomas Merton
6
“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.” —Victor Hugo
7
“Music is an outburst of the soul.” —Frederick Delius
8
“Once upon a time singing was a part of everyday life
as much as talking, physical exercise and religion.
Our distant ancestors, wherever they were in this world,
sang while pounding grain, paddling canoes or walking long journeys.
Can we begin to make our lives once more all of a piece?
Finding the right songs and singing them over and over
is a way to start.
And when one person taps out a beat
while another leads into the melody
or three people discover a harmony they never knew existed,
or a crowd joins in on a chorus
as though to raise the ceiling a few feet higher,
then they also know there is hope for the world.” —Pete Seeger
9
“Music can name the unnamable
and communicate the unknowable.”
—Leonard Bernstein
10
“Joy is more joyful, given a tune.” —Jane Swan
11
“In ancient times the greatest of the prophets were great musicians.” —Hazrat Inayat Khan
12
“To know a man is not to know his name but to know his melody.”
—Unknown Asian philosopher
13
“Are we not formed, as notes of music are,
For one another, though dissimilar?”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
14
“To enter into the initiation of sound, of vibration and mindfulness, is to take a giant step toward consciously knowing the soul.”
—Don G. Campbell
15
“Without music, life is a journey through a desert.” —Pat Conroy
16
“Do you know that our soul is composed of harmony?”
—Leonardo daVinci
17
“Life is a symphony, and the action of every person in this life
is the playing of his particular part in the music.”
—Hazrat Inayat Khan
18
“Rhythm and harmony find their way into the secret places of the soul.”
—Plato
19
“Music is a spiritual doorway. …
Its power comes from the fact that
It plugs directly into the soul.”
—Peter Gabriel
20
“Music seems to be the bridge
over the gulf between
form and the formless.”
—Hazrat Inayat Khan
21
“Music gives a soul to the universe,
wings to the mind,
flight to the imagination,
a charm to sadness,
gaiety and life to everything.”
—Plato
22
“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.”
—Anne Lamott
23
“All one’s life is a music,
if one touches the notes rightly, and in time.”
—John Ruskin
24
“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.”
—Toba Beta
25
“Our light is a voice;
with our song we make a road,
a road for the spirit to cross over.”
—A Passamaqoddy song
26
“If you want the truth, I’ll tell you the truth:
Listen to the secret sound, the real sound, which is inside you..
The music from the strings no one touches.”
—Kabir
27
“There is really only one song,
and it’s the Great Song, the cosmic song,
the song that all things, animals, plants and humans
sing in their deepest heart
And every song that a human sings with his or her voice
is only an expression of that one Great Song
that is there from the beginning
and will be there after the end.”
—Brother David Steindl-Rast
28
“Sound is the nature of Creation, as spoken through so many cultures, from Aboriginal to Biblical to Hindu. When we attune to our own sacred nature, and voice this in resonance with clarity and trust, we come into contact with our very essence.”
—Zacciah, The Center of Light
29
“For a musician, music is
the best way to unite with God.”
—Hazrat Inayat Khan
30
“The music flows within me like pure spirit.
What a wonderful conversation within the flow of universal energy!
…O Great One, I give thanks for this and for all music—
a power line fed into my heart from the universal grid.”
—Modern prayer from Vienna, Austria
SOURCES
1. Spirit into Sound: The Magic of Music, written and compiled by Mickey Hart and Fredric Lieberman (Grateful Dead Books, Novato, California, 1999).
2. Music, by Hazrat Inayat Khan (Sufi Publishing Company, 1962).
3. The Sacred Art of Chant, by Ana Hernández (Woodstock, Vermont, Skylight Paths Publishing, 2005).
4. Chanting, by Robert Gass (New York, Broadway Books, 1999).
5. Music of the Soul: Composing Life Out of Loss, Joy S. Berger (New York, Routledge, 2006).
6. Music Therapy at the End of Life, ed. Cheryl Dileo and Joanne Loewy (Cherry Hill, New Jersey, Jeffrey Books, 2005).
7. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/harmony.html
8. www.healingmusic.org/Library/Quotes/index.asp
9. thecenteroflight.net/SacredSound.html
10. http://thinkexist.com/quotes/with/keyword/harmony/
Jan Thomas - SoulandMeaning.com 