Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Quotes

Quotes about:

• Where the heart does not enter; there can be no music.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Heart, Doe

  166 Copy quote

• Music is an incomparably more powerful means and is a subtler language for expressing the thousand different moments of the soul's moods.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Powerful, Mean, Soul

  197 Copy quote

• Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Music, Work, Inspiration

  155 Copy quote

• To regret the past, to hope in the future, and never to be satisfied with the present: that is what I spend my whole life doing

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Regret, Past, Whole Life

  158 Copy quote

• Truly there would be reason to go mad were it not for music.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Music, Mad, Would Be

  155 Copy quote

• …You see, my dear friend, I am made up of contradictions, and I have reached a very mature age without resting upon anything positive, without having calmed my restless spirit either by religion or philosophy. Undoubtedly I should have gone mad but for music. Music is indeed the most beautiful of all Heaven's gifts to humanity wandering in the darkness. Alone it calms, enlightens, and stills our souls. It is not the straw to which the drowning man clings; but a true friend, refuge, and comforter, for whose sake life is worth living

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Beautiful, True Friend, Philosophy

  219 Copy quote

• Madam, you ask me how I compose. I compose sitting down.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Music, Sitting Down, Ask Me

  148 Copy quote

• Only music clarifies, reconciles, and consoles. But it is not a straw just barely clutched at. It is a faithful friend, protector, and comforter, and for its sake alone, life in this world is worth living. Who knows, perhaps in heaven there will be no music. So let us live on the earth while we still have life!

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Heaven, Faithful, World

  123 Copy quote

• The muse doesn't come without being called.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Life, Muse

  59 Copy quote

• Music possesses much richer means of expression and it is a more subtle medium for translating the 1000 shifting moments of the feelings of the soul.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Mean, Expression, Feelings

  127 Copy quote

• There is no doubt that even the greatest musical geniuses have sometimes worked without inspiration. This guest (inspiration) does not always respond to the first invitation. We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavouring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Believe, Inspiration, Artist

  133 Copy quote

• I like the plot of The Nutcracker - not at all.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Plot, Nutcrackers

  75 Copy quote

• How can one express the indefinable sensations that one experiences while writing an instrumental composition that has no definite subject? It is a purely lyrical process. It is a musical confession of the soul, which unburdens itself through sounds just as a lyric poet expresses himself through poetry...As the poet Heine said, 'Where words leave off, music begins.'

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Music, Writing, Soul

  96 Copy quote

• If that condition of mind and soul, which we call inspiration, lasted long without intermission, no artist could survive it. The strings would break and the instrument be shattered into fragments.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Inspiration, Artist, Long

  64 Copy quote

• What I need is to believe in myself again — for my faith has been greatly undermined; it seems to me my role is over.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Believe, Needs, Roles

  Letter to a nephew, February 9, 1893.

  71 Copy quote

• Mozart is the highest, the culminating point that beauty has attained in the sphere of music.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Spheres, Highest

  46 Copy quote

• We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavoring to meet it halfway, we easily become indirect and apathetic.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Artist, Self, Hands

  62 Copy quote

• The creative process is like music which takes root with extraordinary force and rapidity

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Roots, Creative, Process

  74 Copy quote

• I have put my whole soul into this work [The Pathetique Symphony] . . . You cannot imagine what joy I feel at the thought that my days are not yet over and that I may still accomplish much.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Symphony, Joy, Soul

  67 Copy quote

• After the last notes of Gotterdammerung I felt as though I had been let out of prison.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Lasts, Prison, Notes

  "The Musician's World". Book by Hans Gal, 1965.

  85 Copy quote

• Mozart is the musical Christ.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Musical, Christ

  12 Copy quote

• I feel I shall live a long time.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Long, Feels, Long Time

  48 Copy quote

• I sit down to the piano regularly at nine-o'clock in the morning and Mesdames les Muses have learned to be on time for that rendezvous.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Music, Morning, Piano

  56 Copy quote

• A self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Artist, Self, Hands

  54 Copy quote

• It is already a great thing if the main ideas and general outline of a work come without any racking of brains, as the result of that supernatural and inexplicable force we call inspiration.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Inspiration, Ideas, Brain

  18 Copy quote

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