Pablo Casals Quotes

For the past eighty years I have started each day in the same manner. It is not a mechanical routine, but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano, and play two preludes and fugues of Bach. I cannot think of doing otherwise. It is a sort of benediction on the house. But that is not its only meaning for me. It is a rediscovery of the world of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being.

Of course, I continue to play and to practice. I think I would do so if I lived for another hundred years.

For me, Bach is like Shakespeare. He has known all and felt all. He is everything.

The most important thing in music is what is not in the notes.

I see in the melody of Nature, God. It is a wonderful work of art. The spirit of the art is wonderful. And I feel that I am myself because I have never taken music lightly. Music is the manifestation of God, like everything else.

For twelve years I studied and worked at them every day, and I was nearly 25 before I had the courage to play one of them in public. Before I did, no violinist or cellist had ever played a Suite in its entirety.

Music must serve a purpose; it must be a part of something larger than itself, a part of humanity.

Beauty is all about us, but how many are blind! They look at the wonder of this earth and seem to see nothing. People move hectically but give little thought to where they are going. They seek excitement ... as if they were lost and desperate.

Music will save the world.

The only weapons I ever had were my cello and my baton.

In music, in the sea, in a flower, in a leaf, in an act of kindness... I see what people call God in all these things.

If you play Bach every day, you are not so alone.

When we play an unaccompanied Bach suite we may compare ourselves to an actor in Shakespeare's day, creating scenery which did not exist at all, through the power of declamation and suggestion. So in Bach. There is but one voice -- and many voices have to be suggested.

Throughout my career, nervousness and stage-fright have never left me before playing. And each of the thousands of concerts I have played at, I feel as bad as I did the very first time.

To retire is to begin to die.

It takes courage for people to listen to their own goodness and act on it.

To live is not enough; we must take part.

Bach is the supreme genius of music... This man, who knows everything and feels everything, cannot write one note, however unimportant it may appear, which is anything but transcendent. He has reached the heart of every noble thought, and has done it in the most perfect way.

The heart of the melody can never be put down on paper.

Parents shouldn't lie to their children-not even when they think it's for their own good. Even a little lie is dangerous.

The most perfect technique is that which is not noticed at all.

You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.