Gustav Mahler Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Gustav Mahler

  Music, Symphony, World

  58 Copy quote

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

  Gustav Mahler

  Fire, History, Ashes

  107 Copy quote

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

  Gustav Mahler

  Musical, Classical Music, Notes

  61 Copy quote

• 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.

  Gustav Mahler

  Depressing, Stars, Way In Life

  Alma Mahler, Gustav Mahler, Donald Mitchell, Knud Martner (1973). “Gustav Mahler: memories and letters”, John Murray Publishers

  63 Copy quote

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

  Gustav Mahler

  Funny, Music, Expression

  Letter to Max Marschalk, March 26, 1896.

  98 Copy quote

• It is a funny thing, but when I am making music, all the answers I seek for in life seem to be there, in the music. Or rather, I should say, when I am making music, there are no questions and no need for answers.

  Gustav Mahler

  Music, Funny Things, Needs

  69 Copy quote

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

  Gustav Mahler

  Writing, Symphony, World

  20 Copy quote

• Tradition is tending the flame, not worshiping the ashes.

  Gustav Mahler

  Flames, Ashes, Tradition

  30 Copy quote

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

  Gustav Mahler

  Inspiring, Wall, Giving

  45 Copy quote

• 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.

  Gustav Mahler

  Austria, World, Homeless

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  30 Copy quote

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

  Gustav Mahler

  Failure, Two, Numbers

  15 Copy quote

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

  Gustav Mahler

  Choose Me

  14 Copy quote

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

  Gustav Mahler

  Vanity, Renounce, Conventions

  62 Copy quote

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

  Gustav Mahler

  Way, Opinion, Oneself

  16 Copy quote

• That which draws us by its mystical force; what every created thing, even the very stones, feels with absolute certainty as the center of its being... is the force of love. Christians call this "eternal blessedness." It is a necessity of man for growth and joy.

  Gustav Mahler

  Christian, Men, Joy

  45 Copy quote

• God can only be comprehended as Love.

  Gustav Mahler

  9 Copy quote

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

  Gustav Mahler

  Writing, Thinking, Boring

  39 Copy quote

• We all return. It is this certainty that gives meaning to life and it does not make the slightest difference whether or not in a later incarnation we remember the former life. What counts is not the individual and his comfort, but the great aspiration to the perfect and the pure which goes on in each incarnation.

  Gustav Mahler

  Differences, Giving, Perfect

  40 Copy quote

• 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.

  Gustav Mahler

  Scare, Peculiar, Helping

  45 Copy quote

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

  Gustav Mahler

  Reluctance, Summit, Higher

  7 Copy quote

• Discipline, work. Work, discipline.

  Gustav Mahler

  Discipline

  15 Copy quote

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

  Gustav Mahler

  Invention, Divine

  36 Copy quote

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

  Gustav Mahler

  Knowing, Firsts, Strange

  15 Copy quote

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

  Gustav Mahler

  Experience

  23 Copy quote

• I have become a different person. I don't know whether this person is better, he certainly is not happier.

  Gustav Mahler

  Different, Persons, Knows

  4 Copy quote

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