These Ballad quotes will inspire you. A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French chanson balladée or ballade, which were original “dance songs”.
Below you will find a collection of motivating, knowledgeable, and encouraging Ballad quotes, Ballad sayings, and Ballad proverbs.
Best Ballad Quotes
- “Everyone who knows me knows that I’m a hopeless romantic who listens to love ballads and doo-wop songs all the time.” ~ Henry Rollins
- “A well-composed song strikes the mind and softens the feelings, and produces a greater effect than a moral work, which convinces our reason, but does not warm our feelings, nor effect the slightest alteration in our habits” ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
- “You can’t imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life.” ~ Bob Dylan
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“I love theatrics and have a huge imagination: Why would I want to sit onstage and sing a bunch of ballads back-to-back?” ~ Christina Aguilera
- “I subscribe to that school of thespian – to be a wandering minstrel or traveling player, a thing of rags and patches, of ballads, songs and snatches.” ~ Julian Sands
- “Fergie will sing ballads to the dogs and they’ll sit there rapt. You know your wife’s a star when she keeps the dogs entertained for 20 minutes.” ~ Josh Duhamel
- “I’d like to do a pop album with an R and B influence. I definitely want to have those big ballads with the uptempo hits as well.” ~ Pia Toscano
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“My favorite type of music to sing is definitely those big ballads, I just love doing those power ballads.” ~ Pia Toscano
- “It’s true, there’s a lot of melancholy in my music. I don’t know why, I’m not a melancholy person. I’ve always been drawn to it. Ever since I was a kid, if I had an album I would play the ballads on repeat.” ~ Norah Jones
- “Well the country songs themselves are three-chord stories, ballads which are mostly sad. If you are already feeling sorry for yourself when you listen to them they will take you to an even sadder place.” ~ Willie Nelson
- “But I think beautiful is simple and elegant, like a ballad with simple harmony.” ~ John Fogerty
- “I think that ballads are always something where I can really become one with the audiance.” ~ Namie Amuro
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“In nearly all ballads, the words set the mood and meaning, while the music intensifies or enhances them.” ~ Kate Smith
- “Even on the most serious ballads, I’ll throw in a tongue-in-cheek remark.” ~ Brad Paisley
- “I also plan to release a ballads collection.” ~ Vinnie Vincent
- “The Border Ballads, for instance, and the Robin Hood Ballads, clearly suppose a state of society which is nothing but a very circumscribed and not very important heroic age.” ~ Lascelles Abercrombie
- “True popular ballads are the spontaneous products of nature.” ~ Francis James Child
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“Some people resemble ballads which are only sung for a certain time.” ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld
- “I have a passion for ballad. . . . They are the gypsy children of song, born under green hedgerows in the leafy lanes and bypaths of literature,–in the genial Summertime.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- “I wanted to bring back that big, ballad type of music that we used to love so much. Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, when they first came out, that’s what I grew up singing.” ~ LaToya London
- “In Van Halen there were moments, like in some of the ballads, I put my heart and soul into those records. Those lyrics when I sang ’em, I gave myself goosebumps.” ~ Sammy Hagar
- “Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.” ~ Douglas MacArthur
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“I like to sing ballads the way Eddie Fisher does and the way Perry Como does. But the way I’m singing now is what makes the money.” ~ Elvis Presley
- “The farmer’s daughter hath soft brown hair And I met with a ballad, I can’t say where, That wholly consisted of lines like these.” ~ Charles Stuart Calverley
- “For a ballad’s a thing you expect to find lies in.” ~ Samuel Lover
- “More solid things do not show the complexion of the times so well as Ballads and Libels.” ~ John Selden
- “The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on the plain at West Point?but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that old soldiers never die; they just fade away.” ~ Douglas MacArthur
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“A famous man is Robin Hood, The English ballad-singer’s joy.” ~ William Wordsworth
- “A ballad once in a while doesn’t go amiss” ~ Chrissie Hynde
- “I love a ballad but even too well if it be doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed and sung lamentably.” ~ William Shakespeare
- “I was kind of known as a ballad singer. People would send ballads. Some of them would go over my shoulder and float off the top of my head, and I just didn’t feel anything. Then I would hear a song that would absolutely shake me.” ~ Rita Coolidge
- “I had rather be a kitten and cry mew Than one of these same metre ballet-mongers.” ~ William Shakespeare
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“I have always been a sucker for ballads, but you have to be careful these days, you can’t overload people.” ~ Joe Cocker
- “Do you have any idea how much an elephant drinks?” ~ Sara Gruen
- “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” ~ William Wordsworth
- “You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.” ~ Miles Davis
- “There’s a story behind every old ballad or work song or nonsense song that I ever knew. Sometimes it’s a fascinating story. A story of people struggling for freedom, struggling to get along in this old world.” ~ Pete Seeger
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“I do ballads that say what every man wants to say and that every woman wants to hear, or I do songs about social issues.” ~ Kenny Rogers
- “To sing the ballad with a knowingness about what you are talking about. If it’s somebody else’s lyric, and the message is a little unusual for you, it requires that you learn that new message.” ~ Al Jarreau
- “All melodious poets shall be hoarse as street ballads, when once the penetrating keynote of nature and spirit is sounded-the earth-beat, sea-beat, heart-beat, which make the tune to which the sun rolls, and the globule of blood and the sap of the trees.” ~ Charles Ives
- “I’m not a real good musician, but I can write [a song] pretty well. I experiment once in a while to see what I can do. I find out the best I can do is stay with ballads.” ~ Marty Robbins
- “I had rather be a Kitten, and cry mew, Than one of these same Meeter Ballad-mongers: I had rather heare a Brazen Candlestick turn’d, Or a dry Wheele grate on the Axle-tree, And that would set my teeth nothing an edge, Nothing so much, as mincing Poetrie.” ~ William Shakespeare
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“Oh, I’m a ballad queen for sure… I don’t dig dance stuff very much but I seem to hit the charts with it. Go figure.” ~ Phyllis Hyman
- “I laughed and pointed out that “Hash Browns Mean Nothing Without You” was a pretty good name for a band. “Or a song,” the Duke said, and then she started singing all glam rock, a glove up to her face holding an imaginary mic as she rocked out an a cappella power ballad. “Oh, I deep fried for you / But now I weep ‘n’ cry for you / Oh, babe, this meal was made for two / And these hash browns mean nothing, oh these hash browns mean nothing, yeah these HASH BROWNS MEAN NOTHIN’ without you.” ~ John Green
- “Inspiration and ideas only come to me when I have not had a woman in a very long time… Ballads, polonaises, even a whole concerto may have been lost forever up your des durka, I can’t tell you how many. I have been so deeply engulfed in my love for you I have hardly created anything.” ~ Claude Debussy
- “Actually when I’m depressed or feeling down, I seem to play quiet music and enjoy the time. So I listen to a lot of ballads and I try to enjoy the time with music.” ~ Kim Tae-yeon
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“I have decided long ago that my songs and ballads would not get the hugs and kisses of the capitalistic experts.” ~ Woody Guthrie
- “Too many musicians rush through everything with too many notes. I need time to take the picture. A ballad should be a ballad. It’s important to understand what the song is saying, and learn how to tell the story. It takes time. I can’t rush it. I really can’t rush it.” ~ Shirley Horn
- “It’s hard to pin down what makes Weiss’ music so distinctive. Perhaps it’s that even in the ballads, the tone is upbeat, the outlook positive. The way Weiss writes – passionately, wittily and with respect for his fellow musicians – attests to his talent and appetite for creativity, and suggests a long, enjoyable career.” ~ Carlo Wolff
- “In my early 20s, I had this idea that I was going to front a band, like Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin. I didn’t just want to be the chick singing ballads about somebody breaking my heart. Everyone in the business said, ‘Why don’t you do what Olivia Newton-Jonn and Linda Ronstadt are doing?’ But I wanted to sing as a powerful female who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind or be sexual.” ~ Pat Benatar
- “The idea of songwriting is a transformative thing, and what I do with songwriting is take situations that are quite ordinary and transform them in some way. Apart from things like the murder ballads, the songs I write, at their core, are quite ordinary human concerns, but the process of writing about them transforms them into something else.” ~ Nick Cave
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“If we hooked up, he could write me ballads and stuff. You gotta admit, nothing’s sexier than a guy who writes music.” ~ Becca Fitzpatrick
- “I swear that woman had a previous career as a death-hunter selling tragic ballads down around the Seven Dials,” said Will. “And I do wish she wouldn’t sing about poisoning just after we’ve eaten.” ~ Cassandra Clare
- “There are, of course, inherent tendencies to repetition in music itself. Our poetry, our ballads, our songs are full of repetition; nursery rhymes and the little chants and songs we use to teach young children have choruses and refrains. We are attracted to repetition, even as adults; we want the stimulus and the reward again and again, and in music we get it. Perhaps, therefore, we should not be surprised, should not complain if the balance sometimes shifts too far and our musical sensitivity becomes a vulnerability.” ~ Oliver Sacks
- “This summer-sweet night is only one minute upon one minute upon another Beautiful cacophony, sugar upon lips, dancing to exhaustion I thought of you, before this minute upon another minute upon another Until, numb, my lips fell onto the mouth of another, and I was undone. ~from Golden Tongue: The Poems of Steven Slaughter which is a fictional book in Ballad: A gathering of faerie” ~ Maggie Stiefvater
- “Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope as old as your despair. In the central place of every heart there is a recording chamber. So long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer and courage, so long are you young. When your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and then only, are you grown old. And then, indeed as the ballad says, you just fade away” ~ Douglas MacArthur
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“Ye are better than all the ballads That ever were sung or said; For ye are living poems, And all the rest are dead.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- “Every generation wants to be the last. Every generation hates the next trend in music they can’t understand. We hate to give up those reins of our culture. To find our own music playing in elevators. The ballad for our revolution, turned into background music for a television commercial. To find our generation’s clothes and hair suddenly retro.” ~ Chuck Palahniuk
- “In eternity this world will be like Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets.” ~ Marilynne Robinson
- “That’s what is so great about being able to record a 13-song album. You can do a very eclectic group of songs. You do have some almost pop songs in there, but you do have your traditional country, story songs. You have your ballads, your happy songs, your sad songs, your love songs, and your feisty songs.” ~ Reba McEntire
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“My love was Bob Dylan, but as I got older I realized a good ballad was a good ballad.” ~ Bonnie Raitt
- “Now ballads, I can mess around and get up on somebody on a ballad. People ain’t seen it yet, but I can mess around and get up in there. I’ve had Ruben Studdard up in my house, Brian McKnight, Tank. Every once in a while I throw down with them.” ~ Jamie Foxx
- “I’d hear some beautiful Sade or Kings Of Convenience ballad remixed in a club and I liked that these simple little songs seemed to be masquerading. They had put on superhero costumes, got all beefy, and here they were on the dancefloor. I was interested in that. I can’t make electronic beats, so I leave it to the pros like Boys Noize and Chromeo.” ~ Feist
- “My child, you have a flawed grasp of the nature of myth-making. I am a poet and storyteller, a creator of ballads and sagas. Pray do not confuse the exercise of the imagination with mere mendacity. I am a master of the mysteries of words, their meanings and music and mellifluous magic.” ~ Frances Hardinge
- “If you are the lantern, I am the flame; If you are the lake, then I am the rain; If you are the desert, I am the sea; If you are the blossom, I am the bee; If you are the fruit, then I am the core; If you are the rock, then I am the ore; If you are the ballad, I am the word; If you are the sheath, then I am the sword.” ~ Cecilia Dart-Thornton
