Gustav Mahler Quotes

I hope you will no longer accuse me of a lack of delicacy. as I now count on your understanding.

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

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

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

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

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

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

For the last month I have been a strict vegetarian. The moral effects of this regime are immense, owing to the voluntary subjugation of the flesh and the resulting absence of desires. You will appreciate how full I am of this idea when I tell you that I expect it to work the regeneration of mankind. I advise you to change over to a natural way of life, with proper nourishment (wholemeal bread), and you will soon feel the benefit.

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

The longer you live and the more you learn, the more clearly you will feel the difference between the few men who are truly great and the mere virtuosi.

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

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

Tradition is laziness.

It is always the same with me; only when I experience something do I compose, and only when composing do I experience! After all, a musician's nature can hardly be expressed in words.

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

With the coming of spring, I am calm again.

Discipline, work. Work, discipline.

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

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

Tradition is the spreading of fire and not the veneration of ashes.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

An operetta is simply a small and gay opera.

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.

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

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

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

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

Even if people censure me, they should do so hat in hand.

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

The real art of conducting consists in transitions.

Life's been nothing but paperwork.

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.

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

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

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

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

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