Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.
Artists who have won fame are often embarrassed by it; thus their first works are often their best.
All my life I have regarded myself as one of Mozart’s greatest admirers, and I will remain one until my last breath.
This is the mark of a really admirable man: steadfastness in the face of trouble.
Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?
Anyone who tells a lie has not a pure heart, and cannot make a good soup.
We all make mistakes, but everyone makes different mistakes.
I would rather write 10,000 notes than a single letter of the alphabet.
One must not hold one’s self so divine as to be unwilling occasionally to make improvements in one’s creations.
Then let us all do what is right, strive with all our might toward the unattainable, develop as fully as we can the gifts God has given us, and never stop learning.
I can live only wholly with you or not at all.
I will seize fate by the throat; it shall certainly never wholly overcome me.
My heart is full of many things there are moments when I feel that speech is nothing after all.
In the world of art, as in the whole of creation, freedom and progress are the main objectives.
Even in poverty I lived like a king for I tell you that nobility is the thing that makes a king.
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.
Richard Wagner commenting on the music of Ludvig Van Beethoven: He was a Titan, wrestling with the Gods.
He that divines the secret of my music is freed from the unhappiness that haunts the whole world of men.
Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life. Although the spirit be not master of that which it creates through music, yet it is blessed in this creation, which, like every creation of art, is mightier than the artist.
Art always demands of us something new.