Gustav Mahler Quotes

Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.

Beauty and fullness of tone can be achieved by having the whole orchestra play with high clarinets and a carefully selected number of piccolos.

You must renounce all superficiality, all convention, all vanity and delusion.

The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star but to go one's way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause.

What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.

A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.

But it's peculiar, as soon as I am in the midst of nature and by myself, everything that is base and trivial vanishes without trace. On such days nothing scares me; and this helps me again and again.

I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.

If you think you're boring your audience, go slower not faster.

In its beginnings, music was merely chamber music, meant to be listened to in a small space by a small audience.

In Bach, the vital cells of music are united as the world is in God.

Melodic invention is one of the surest signs of a divine gift.

There is a world of difference between a Mahler eighth note and a normal eighth note.

I am thrice homeless, as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed.

Spring won't let me stay in this house any longer! I must get out and breathe the air deeply again.

Tradition is tending the flame, not worshiping the ashes.

With the coming of spring, I am calm again.

A full cup of wine at the right time is worth more than all the kingdoms of this earth!

Only when I experience do I compose - only when I compose do I experience.

To write a symphony is, for me, to construct a world.

The impressions of the spriritual experiences gave my future life its form and content.

I was a crazy young man who let himself be blinded by his passions and obeyed only the impulses of the moment.

A true personality . . . is like a robust organism that, with unconscious sureness, seeks out and digests the nourishment appropriate to it and vigorously rejects that which is unsuitable.

What I wanted and what I visualized while composing has not always been realized.

I beg of you... never assume an inner or an outer pose, never a disguise.

Behind me the branches of a wasted and sterile existence are cracking.

All that is not perfect down to the smallest detail is doomed to perish.

Never let oneself be guided by the opinion of one's contemporaries. Continue steadfastly on one's way.

It is strange how one feels drawn forward without knowing at first where one is going.

Discipline, work. Work, discipline.

Don't bother looking at the view - I have already composed it.

Both my marriages were failures! Number one departed, and number two stayed

It's not just a question of conquering a summit previously unknown, but of tracing, step by step, a new pathway to it.

It should be one’s sole endeavor to see everything afresh and create it anew.

I also had a brother who was like me a musician and a composer. A man of great talent, far more gifted than I. He died very young... he killed himself in the prime of his life.

I don't choose what I compose. It chooses me.

Destiny smiles upon me but without making me the least bit happier.

The call of love sounds very hollow among these immobile rocks.

Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested. So let us not be idle.

It is easier to achieve a desired result in short pieces.

The real art of conducting consists in transitions.

To judge a composer's work, one must consider it as a whole.

The further the music develops, the more complex the apparatus used by the composer to express his thoughts becomes.

God can only be comprehended as Love.

Don't bother to look, I've composed all this already.

In the theatrical works we love and admire the most, the ending of the drama generally takes place offstage.

I don't let myself get carried away by my own ideas; I abandon 19 out of 20 of them every day.

When I have reached a summit, I leave it with great reluctance, unless it is to reach for another, higher one.

The spirit can assert itself only through the medium of clear form.