Quotes from Franz Liszt

Music is the heart of life." She speaks love; "without it, there is no possible good and with it everything is beautiful.

Beware of missing chances; otherwise it may be altogether too late some day.

In Hungary all native music, in its origin, is divided naturally into melody destined for song or melody for the dance.

Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought, as it is forced in most arts and especially in the art of words.

Brahms' Variations are better than mine, but mine were written before his.

As for famous men who were not artists, I am beginning to be tired of them. Those poor little scoundrels who are called great men fill me with nothing but overwhelming horror.

We need improvement in the style of performance. There is no more advantage in a musician who plays and conducts than in one who is only a beater of rhythm.

The music of the Gypsies belongs in the sphere of improvisation rather than in any other, without which it would have no power to exist.

In life one must decide whether to conjugate the verb to have or the verb to be.

The principal task of a conductor is not to put himself in evidence but to disappear behind his functions as much as possible. We are pilots, not servants.

As the mother teaches her children how to express themselves in their language, so one Gypsy musician teaches the other. They have never shown any need for notation.

Life is only a long and bitter suicide, and faith alone can transform this suicide into a sacrifice.

Supreme serenity still remains the Ideal of great Art. The shapes and transitory forms of life are but stages toward this Ideal, which Christ's religion illuminates with His divine light.

I did not compose my work as one might put on a church vestment... rather it sprung from the truly fervent faith of my heart, such as I have felt it since my childhood.

The public is always good.

I find little in the works of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and others when they are led by a conductor who functions like a windmill.

A theatre receives recognition through its initiative, which is indispensable for first-rate performances.

Sorrowful and great is the artist's destiny.

Music is the heart of life. She speaks love; without it, there is no possible good and with it everything is beautiful.

For the virtuoso, musical works are in fact nothing but tragic and moving materializations of his emotions; he is called upon to make them speak, weep, sing and sigh, to recreate them in accordance with his own consciousness. In this way he, like the composer, is a creator, for he must have within himself those passions that he wishes to bring so intensely to life.

I love you sometimes foolishly and at these moments I do not understand that I could not, would not, and should not be so absorbing a thought for you as you are for me...

Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought, as it is forced in most arts and especially in the art of words.

Brahms' Variations are better than mine, but mine were written before his.

A person of any mental quality has ideas of his own. This is common sense.