Words matter. These are the best Richard Wagner Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I have long been convinced that my artistic ideal stands or falls with Germany. Only the Germany that we love and desire can help us achieve that ideal.
I am fond of them, of the inferior beings of the abyss, of those who are full of longing.
Wherever the fish are, that’s where we go.
The measures and acts which show us violently disposed towards the outer world can never stay without a violent reaction on ourselves.
Divorce is one of the most financially traumatic things you can go through. Money spent on getting mad or getting even is money wasted.
I wish I could score everything for horns.
Here, everything is tragic through and through, and the will, that fain would shape a world according to its wish, at last can reach no greater satisfaction than the breaking of itself in dignified annulment.
Achievements, seldom credited to their source, are the result of unspeakable drudgery and worries.
I have only a mind to live, to enjoy – i.e., to work as an artist, and produce my works; but not for the muddy brains of the common herd.
Imagination creates reality.
Though German art can never be Bavarian, but simply German, yet Munich is the capital of this German Art; here, under shelter of a Prince who kindles my enthusiasm, to feel myself a native and member of the people was, to me, the homeless wanderer, a deep, a genuine need.
What manner of thing this ‘public opinion’ is, should be best known to those who have its name forever in their mouths and erect the regard for it into a positive article of religion. Its self-styled organ in our times is the ‘Press.’
Joy is not in things; it is in us.
I write music with an exclamation point!
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.
How absurd these critics must seem to me, who in their modern wantonness have become so ingenious. They want to interpret my Tannhauser as specifically Christian and impute to him a tendency to impotent glorification!
I can’t distract myself enough here, for sketches to a new opera are constantly buzzing around in my head, to the extent that I need all my strength to wrest myself from them.
I hate this fast growing tendency to chain men to machines in big factories and deprive them of all joy in their efforts – the plan will lead to cheap men and cheap products.
Everything lives and lasts by the inner necessity of its being, by its own nature’s need.
Life is earnest – and always has been.
