People err who think my art comes easily to me. I assure you, dear friend, nobody has devoted so much time and thought to compositions as I. There is not a famous master whose music I have not industriously studied through many times.
When I am traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that ideas flow best and most abundantly.
I never lie down at night without reflecting that, young as I am, I may not live to see another day.
Even when I can play Europe’s most precious keyboard, to have to listen to people who don’t understand, or do not want to understand, and who are incapable of grasping my intent, whatever I play, does surely forfeit my lust for playing at all.
Love guards the heart from the abyss.
God first, then papa.
I must give you a piece of intelligence that you perhaps already know, namely that the ungodly arch-villain Voltaire has died miserably like a dog, just like a brute. That is his reward!
I too had to work hard, so as not to have to work hard any longer.
I love it when an aria fits a singer as perfectly as a suit of well-tailored clothes.
One must not make oneself cheap here – that is a cardinal point – or else one is done. Whoever is most impertinent has the best chance.
She’s only pretty in that she has two small black eyes and a good figure.
My fatherland has always the first claim on me.
To every good friend I send my greet feet; addio nitwit. Love true true true until the grave, if I live that long and do behave.
Directly after God in heaven comes a Papa.
I do not hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them gleich alles zusammen – at the same time all together.
Nevertheless the passions, whether violent or not, should never be so expressed as to reach the point of disgust...
If Germany, my beloved fatherland, of whom you know I am proud, will not accept me, then must I, in the name of God, again make France or England richer by one capable German – and to the shame of the German nation.
Neither rejoice nor lament prematurely; for whatever may happen, all will be well if we only have health; for happiness exists – merely in the imagination.
Now let the matter rest as it is, or as it may be, what avail useless speculations? What is to occur we do not know; still in so far we do! what God wills!
As I love Mannheim, Mannheim loves me.
To win applause one must write stuff so simple that a coachman might sing it.