Words matter. These are the best Gustav Mahler Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
The call of love sounds very hollow among these immobile rocks.
A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.
Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested. So let us not be idle.
I beg of you… never assume an inner or an outer pose, never a disguise.
It’s not just a question of conquering a summit previously unknown, but of tracing, step by step, a new pathway to it.
I was a crazy young man who let himself be blinded by his passions and obeyed only the impulses of the moment.
I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.
If you think you’re boring your audience, go slower not faster.
I hope you will no longer accuse me of a lack of delicacy. as I now count on your understanding.
All that is not perfect down to the smallest detail is doomed to perish.
The point is not to take the world’s opinion as a guiding star but to go one’s way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause.
Behind me the branches of a wasted and sterile existence are cracking.
I also had a brother who was like me a musician and a composer. A man of great talent, far more gifted than I. He died very young… he killed himself in the prime of his life.
An operetta is simply a small and gay opera.
Don’t bother looking at the view – I have already composed it.
In its beginnings, music was merely chamber music, meant to be listened to in a small space by a small audience.
I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.
Melodic invention is one of the surest signs of a divine gift.
It should be one’s sole endeavor to see everything afresh and create it anew.
I was a crazy young man who let himself be blinded by his passions and obeyed only the impulses of the moment.
Discipline, work. Work, discipline.
If you think you’re boring your audience, go slower not faster.
The longer you live and the more you learn, the more clearly you will feel the difference between the few men who are truly great and the mere virtuosi.
There is a world of difference between a Mahler eighth note and a normal eighth note.
I don’t let myself get carried away by my own ideas – I abandon 19 out of 20 of them every day.
The spirit can assert itself only through the medium of clear form.
When I have reached a summit, I leave it with great reluctance, unless it is to reach for another, higher one.
It is easier to achieve a desired result in short pieces.
Behind me the branches of a wasted and sterile existence are cracking.
You must renounce all superficiality, all convention, all vanity and delusion.
Beauty and fullness of tone can be achieved by having the whole orchestra play with high clarinets and a carefully selected number of piccolos.
Don’t bother looking at the view – I have already composed it.
If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.
With the coming of spring, I am calm again.
An operetta is simply a small and gay opera.
It is easier to achieve a desired result in short pieces.
A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.
When I have reached a summit, I leave it with great reluctance, unless it is to reach for another, higher one.
If I weren’t the way I am, I shouldn’t write my symphonies.
The real art of conducting consists in transitions.
Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested. So let us not be idle.
I have become a different person. I don’t know whether this person is better, he certainly is not happier.
The further the music develops, the more complex the apparatus used by the composer to express his thoughts becomes.
The longer you live and the more you learn, the more clearly you will feel the difference between the few men who are truly great and the mere virtuosi.
Melodic invention is one of the surest signs of a divine gift.
