Quote collection
134 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Music is the electric soil in which the spirit thinks, lives and invents. All that's electrical stimulates the mind to flowing surging musical creation. I am electrical by nature."
"Handel, to him I bow the knee."
"In the world of art, as in the whole of creation, freedom and progress are the main objectives."
"My heart is full of many things there are moments when I feel that speech is nothing after all."
"ever thine, ever mine, ever ours"
"In the country It seems as if every tree Said to me 'Holy! Holy!' Who can ever express The ecstasy of the woods! Almighty One, In the woods I am blessed. Happy every one in the woods. Every tree speaks through Thee. O God! What glory in the woodland."
"I can live only wholly with you or not at all."
"I want to seize fate by the throat."
"Oh you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn, or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you. Oh how harshly was I flung back by the doubly sad experience of my bad hearing."
"All my life I have regarded myself as one of Mozart's greatest admirers, and I will remain one until my last breath."
"A great poet is the most precious jewel of a nation."
"Music is like a dream. One that I cannot hear."
"such incidents brought me to the verge of despair, but little more and I would have put an end to my life - only art it was that withheld me, - ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I had felt called upon to produce."
"I have always reckoned myself among the greatest admirers of Mozart, and shall do so till the day of my death."
"Anyone who tells a lie has not a pure heart, and cannot make a good soup."
"It is the power of music to carry one directly into the mental state of the composer."
"The Music is the only corporeal introduction to the superior world of Knowledge."
"Art demands of us that we shall not stand still."
"In praise of Thy goodness I must confess that Thou didst try with all Thy means to draw me to Thee. Sometimes it pleased Thee to let me feel the heavy hand of Thy displeasure and to humiliate my proud heart by manifold castigations. Sickness and misfortune didst Thou send upon me to turn my thoughts to my errantries.-One thing, only, O Father, do I ask: cease not to labor for my betterment. In whatsoever manner it be, let me turn to Thee and become fruitful in good works."
"The real artist has no pride. Unfortunately he sees that his art has no limits. He feels obscurely how far he is from the goal. While he is perhaps being admired by others, he mourns the fact that he has not yet reached the point to which his better genius, like a distant sun, ever beckons to him."