Franz Liszt Quotes
Music is the heart of life." She speaks love; "without it, there is no possible good and with it everything is beautiful.
Real men are sadly lacking in this world, for when they are put to the test they prove worthless.
My sole ambition as a composer is to hurl my javelin into the infinite space of the future.
In Hungary all native music, in its origin, is divided naturally into melody destined for song or melody for the dance.
Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought, as it is forced in most arts and especially in the art of words.
So let us not worry, and look instead as it has been taught us to do, as the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, keeping complete faith in Our Father's goodness.
Life is only a long and bitter suicide, and faith alone can transform this suicide into a sacrifice.
The character of instrumental music... lets the emotions radiate and shine in their own character without presuming to display them as real or imaginary representations.
I am not fond of speaking about politics because I don't have in my possession an army of 200,000 soldiers.
Broad paths are open to every endeavour, and a sympathetic recognition is assured to every one who consecrates his art to the divine services of a conviction of a consciousness.
As for famous men who were not artists, I am beginning to be tired of them. Those poor little scoundrels who are called great men fill me with nothing but overwhelming horror.
Music is never stationary; successive forms and styles are only like so many resting-places - like tents pitched and taken down again on the road to the Ideal.
I did not compose my work as one might put on a church vestment... rather it sprung from the truly fervent faith of my heart, such as I have felt it since my childhood.
Supreme serenity still remains the Ideal of great Art. The shapes and transitory forms of life are but stages toward this Ideal, which Christ's religion illuminates with His divine light.
The principal task of a conductor is not to put himself in evidence but to disappear behind his functions as much as possible. We are pilots, not servants.
I find little in the works of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and others when they are led by a conductor who functions like a windmill.
Companions, in misery and worse, that is what we all are, and to try to change this substantially avails us nothing.
When you write the story of two happy lovers, let the story be set on the banks of Lake Como.
In the oldest chronicles of the times conserved in Hungary, reports will be found of Gypsy music, but never of any other, either Magyar, Slavic or Jewish.
A theatre receives recognition through its initiative, which is indispensable for first-rate performances.
I conclude that the Wagnerian operas which are already in the repertoire, and other masterworks as well, stand in no further need of my services.
It is my fervent wish and my greatest ambition to leave a work with a few useful instructions for the pianists after me.
We need improvement in the style of performance. There is no more advantage in a musician who plays and conducts than in one who is only a beater of rhythm.
The first impulse of a great number of civilized musicians... is to protest ourdeclaration that the music in Hungary belongs to the Gypsies.
Inspiration is enough to give expression to the tone in singing, especially when the song is without words.
The music of the Gypsies belongs in the sphere of improvisation rather than in any other, without which it would have no power to exist.
As the mother teaches her children how to express themselves in their language, so one Gypsy musician teaches the other. They have never shown any need for notation.
