Quotes from Ignacy Jan Paderewski

A man is not necessarily a master because he happened to compose two or three centuries ago. Let us beware of the worship of mere antiquity.

I cannot imagine a genuinely happy home without music in it.

Music expresses first of all sadness rather than joy.

Piano playing is more difficult than statesmanship. It is harder to awake emotions in ivory keys than it is in human beings.

When I miss a week in practice, my audience knows it. When I miss a day, I know it.

If I do not practice one day; I know it. If I do not practice the next, the orchestra knows it; if I do not practice the third day, the whole world knows it.

Change follows change in us, almost without transition; we pass from blissful rapture to sobbing woe; a single step divides our sublimest ecstasies from the darkest depth of spiritual despondency.

Just as surely as every new language mastered opens up a new world, so knowledge of a Beethoven, a Chopin, or a Schumann opens up a new world in spiritual beauty and thought.

The very essence of success is practice.

You are a dear soul who plays polo, and I am a poor Pole who plays solo.

Man is naturally lazy, therefore he invents labor-saving devices.

I established a certain standard of behavior, that, during my playing, there must be no talking.

Art is the expression of the immortal part of man.

The genius is the man who has genuine and deep human relations with others, who does not cut himself off in the search for originality, but who realizes the value of artistic tradition.

I owe my sucess in one per cent to my talent, in ten per cent to luck, and in ninety per cent to hard word. Work, work, and more work is the secret to success.

Art without technique is invertebrate, shapeless, characterless.

The culture of any country is gauged first by its progress in art.

Fatherland before everything, art afterward.

Art is great only when it bears the stamp of the individual.