Quotes from Gustav Mahler

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

The important thing is never to let oneself be guided by the opinion of one's contemporaries; to continue steadfastly on one's way without letting oneself be either defeated by failure or diverted by applause.

Man lives in greatest pain

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

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

Wenn die Welt einmal untergehen sollte, ziehe ich nach Wien, denn dort passiert alles fünfzig Jahre später.

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

God can only be comprehended as Love.

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

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

An operetta is simply a small and gay opera.

The real art of conducting consists in transitions.

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

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

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

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.