Richard Wagner Quotes

Quotes about:

• I regard the Jewish race as the born enemy of pure humanity and everything that is noble in it.

  Richard Wagner

  Race, Humanity, Enemy

  71 Copy quote

• Music is the inarticulate speech of the heart, which cannot be compressed into words, because it is infinite.

  Richard Wagner

  Heart, Thinking, Speech

  70 Copy quote

• The purpose of art: to make the unconscious conscious.

  Richard Wagner

  Art, Purpose, Conscious

  67 Copy quote

• Joy is not in things; it is in us.

  Richard Wagner

  Inspirational, Positive, Happiness

  75 Copy quote

• Imagination creates reality.

  Richard Wagner

  Inspiring, Inspiration, Reality

  50 Copy quote

• It is necessary for us to explain the involuntary repugnance we possess for the nature and personality of the Jews. The Jews have never produced a true poet. Heinrich Heine reached the point where he duped himself into a poet, and was rewarded by his versified lies being set to music by our own composers. He was the conscience of Judaism, just as Judaism is the evil conscience of our modern civilization.

  Richard Wagner

  Lying, Civilization, Evil

  "'Das Judenthum in der Musik' ('Judaism in Music')". Essay by Richard Wagner, 1850.

  38 Copy quote

• I believe in God, Mozart and Beethoven, and likewise their disciples and apostles; - I believe in the Holy Spirit and the truth of the one, indivisible Art; - I believe that this Art proceeds from God, and lives within the hearts of all illumined men.

  Richard Wagner

  Art, Truth, Believe

  "Pilgrimage to Beethoven and Other Essays".

  52 Copy quote

• We must learn to die, and to die in the fullest sense of the word. The fear of the end is the source of all lovelessness

  Richard Wagner

  Ends, Source, Dies

  Richard Wagner, August Roeckel (1897). “Letters to August Roeckel, Translated by Eleanor C. Sellar”

  35 Copy quote

• Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them.

  Richard Wagner

  Music, Looks, Opera Singing

  52 Copy quote

• The language of tones belongs equally to all mankind, and melody is the absolute language in which the musician speaks to every heart.

  Richard Wagner

  Heart, Musician, Tone

  Richard Wagner (1873). “Beethoven”, p.16, Indianapolis : Benham Bros.

  40 Copy quote

• The oldest, truest, most beautiful organ of music, the origin to which alone our music owes its being, is the human voice.

  Richard Wagner

  Beautiful, Voice, Organs

  Richard Wagner (1900). “Opera and Drama”, p.122, U of Nebraska Press

  26 Copy quote

• The only form of music is melody, without melody music is not feasible, and music and melody are quite inseparable.

  Richard Wagner

  Form, Music Is, Inseparable

  24 Copy quote

• It is a truth forever, that where the speech of man stops short there Music's reign begins.

  Richard Wagner

  Men, Forever, Speech

  Richard Wagner (1994). “Pilgrimage to Beethoven and Other Essays”, p.73, U of Nebraska Press

  37 Copy quote

• I am convinced that there are universal currents of Divine Thought vibrating the ether everywhere and that any who can feel these vibrations is inspired.

  Richard Wagner

  Vibrations, Inspired, Divine

  21 Copy quote

• I know absolutely nothing about music.

  Richard Wagner

  Music, Absolutely Nothing, Knows

  13 Copy quote

• My destiny is solitude, and my life is work.

  Richard Wagner

  Work, Destiny, Solitude

  35 Copy quote

• I hate this fast growing tendency to chain men to machines in big factories and deprive them of all joy in their efforts - the plan will lead to cheap men and cheap products.

  Richard Wagner

  Hate, Men, Effort

  34 Copy quote

• A political man is disgusting, but a political wife, horrible.

  Richard Wagner

  Men, Wife, Political

  37 Copy quote

• It should not be presumed that these people (the Jews), who are so separated from us by their religion, have any right to make our laws. But why blame the Jews? It is we who lack all feeling for our own identity, all sense of honour.

  Richard Wagner

  Law, People, Feelings

  Diary entry for November 14, 1878. "Cosima Wagner's Diaries: An Abridgment". Book edited by Geoffrey Skelton, 1994.

  14 Copy quote

• The essence of higher instrumental music lays herein that one is able to express in tones that what one is unable to say in words.

  Richard Wagner

  Essence, Able, Tone

  34 Copy quote

• What Music expresses is eternal, infinite, and ideal; she expresses not the passion, love, desire, of this or that individual in this or that condition, but Passion, Love, Desire itself, and in such infinitely varied phases as lie in her unique possession and are foreign and unknown to any other tongue...So...Here's to Victory, gained by our higher sense over the worthlessness of the vulgar! To Love, which crowns our courage...To the day, to the night!...And three cheers for Music.

  Richard Wagner

  Music, Cheer, Lying

  Richard Wagner (1994). “Pilgrimage to Beethoven and Other Essays”, p.81, U of Nebraska Press

  15 Copy quote

• I believe in God, Mozart, and Beethoven.

  Richard Wagner

  Believe, High Art, I Believe

  Richard Wagner (1994). “Pilgrimage to Beethoven and Other Essays”, p.66, U of Nebraska Press

  9 Copy quote

• ...music is the living God in our bosoms.

  Richard Wagner

  Inspiration, Contemplation, Music Is

  9 Copy quote

• I write music with an exclamation point!

  Richard Wagner

  Music, Writing, Exclamation Points

  31 Copy quote

• Whatever I thought right, to others seemed wrong; what I held to be bad, others approved of.

  Richard Wagner

  Approved

  14 Copy quote

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