Quotes from Nadia Boulanger

Everything we know by heart enriches us and helps us find ourselves. If it should get in the way of finding ourselves, it is because we have no personality.

To study music, we must learn the rules. To create music, we must break them.

False notes can be forgiven, false music cannot.

As far as the execution is concerned ... the most frequent and most serious mistake is to follow the music instead of preceding it.

[On being asked how it felt to be the first female conductor of the Boston Symphony:] I've been a woman for a little more than fifty years, and I've gotten over my original astonishment.

Loving a child doesn't mean giving in to all his whims; to love him is to bring out the best in him, to teach him to love what is difficult.

Great art likes chains. The greatest artists have created art within bounds. Or else they have created their own chains.

A great work is made out of a combination of obedience and liberty.

Always remember your days are blessed. You may know how to profit from them or you may not, but they are blessed.

I've been a woman for a little over 50 years and have gotten over my initial astonishment. As for conducting an orchestra, that's a job where I don't think sex plays much part.

There is nothing boring in life except ourselves.

The art of music is so deep and profound that to approach it very seriously only is not enough. One must approach music with a serious rigor and, at the same time, with a great, affectionate joy.

Nothing is better than music; when it takes us out of time, it has done more for us than we have the right to hope for.

Life is denied by lack of attention whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.

Do nothing for effect. Do it for truth.

The essential conditions of everything you do must be choice, love, passion.

Nothing is better than music.... It has done more for us than we have the right to hope for.

It is one thing to be gifted and quite another thing to be worthy of one's own gift.

Do not take up music unless you would rather die than not do so.

You should never listen to someone practice. That is their work and theirs alone.

Art is not emotion. Art is the medium in which emotion is expressed.

Without discipline, there can be no freedom.

Without order there can be no inner satisfaction. Without inner satisfaction there can be no freedom. Without freedom there is no joy.

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.