Quotes from Richard Wagner

I was in a state of gnawing, sensuous agitation that excited continually both blood and nerves when I sketched out the music for 'Tannhauser' and brought it to completion.

My destiny is solitude, and my life is work.

The purpose of art: to make the unconscious conscious.

One might say that where Religion becomes artificial, it is reserved for Art to save the spirit of religion.

The error in the art-genre of Opera consists herein: a Means of expression (Music) has been made the end, while the End of expression (the Drama) has been made a means.

The most tremendous genius raised Mozart above all masters, in all centuries and in all the arts.

Music truely has to all other arts the same relation as religion to the church.

I am convinced that there are universal currents of Divine Thought vibrating the ether everywhere and that any who can feel these vibrations is inspired.

We find personal success and great, if not enduring, influence on the outer fashioning of the world allotted to the violent, the passionate individual who, unchaining the elemental principles of human impulse under favoring circumstances, points out to greed and self-indulgence the speedy pathways to their satisfaction.

The measures and acts which show us violently disposed towards the outer world can never stay without a violent reaction on ourselves.

Human dignity begins to assert itself only at the point where man is distinguishable from the beast by pity for it.

We must learn to die, and to die in the fullest sense of the word. The fear of the end is the source of all lovelessness