Franz Liszt Quotations

It is impossible to imagine a more complete fusion with nature than that of the Gypsy.

The character of instrumental music... lets the emotions radiate and shine in their own character without presuming to display them as real or imaginary representations.

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

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

Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist.

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.

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

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

Companions, in misery and worse, that is what we all are, and to try to change this substantially avails us nothing.

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

Broad paths are open to every endeavour, and a sympathetic recognition is assured to every one who consecrates his art to the divine services of a conviction of a consciousness.

Inspiration is enough to give expression to the tone in singing, especially when the song is without words.

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 foster a sorrowful conception of affection. Make no sacrifices.

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.

Real men are sadly lacking in this world, for when they are put to the test they prove worthless.

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

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.

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

I conclude that the Wagnerian operas which are already in the repertoire, and other masterworks as well, stand in no further need of my services.

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.

It is my fervent wish and my greatest ambition to leave a work with a few useful instructions for the pianists after me.

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.

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.

Without any assistance whatever, I founded a school in Weimar in 10 years. Only I could perform certain works with the scanty means that I dared not ask anyone else to work with.

In Hungary al native music is divided naturally into melody destined for song or melody for the dance.

Oral musical traditions are rooted in assured and scrupulous faith.

The public is always good.

The Jew continues to monopolize money, and he loosens or strangles the throat of the state with the loosening or strengthening of his purse strings...He has empowered himself with the engines of the press, which he uses to batter at the foundations of society. He is at the bottom of...every enterprise that will demolish first of all thrones, afterwards the altar, afterwards civil law.

The first impulse of a great number of civilized musicians... is to protest ourdeclaration that the music in Hungary belongs to the Gypsies.

When you write the story of two happy lovers, let the story be set on the banks of Lake Como.

Sorrowful and great is the artist's destiny.

The supreme harmony of the cosmos is selected in the harmony of the spirit.

Music is never stationary; successive forms and styles are only like so many resting-places - like tents pitched and taken down again on the road to the Ideal.

In the oldest chronicles of the times conserved in Hungary, reports will be found of Gypsy music, but never of any other, either Magyar, Slavic or Jewish.

You cannot imagine how it spoils one to have been a child prodigy.

So let us not worry, and look instead as it has been taught us to do, as the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, keeping complete faith in Our Father's goodness.

A good Cuban cigar closes the doors to the vulgarities of the world.

I am not fond of speaking about politics because I don't have in my possession an army of 200,000 soldiers.

Truth is a great flirt.

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.

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

My mind and fingers have worked like the damned. Homer, the Bible, Plato, Locke, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Beethoven, Bach, Hummel, Mozart, Weber are all around me. I study them. I devour them with fury.

My sole ambition as a composer is to hurl my javelin into the infinite space of the future.

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 carry a deep sadness of the heart which must now and then break out in sound,

The day will come when all nations amidst which the Jews are dwelling will have to raise the question of their wholesale expulsion, a question which will be one of life or death, good health or chronic disease, peaceful existence or perpetual social fever.

My piano is to me what a ship is to the sailor, what a steed is to the Arab. It is the intimate personal depository of everything that stirred wildly in my brain during the most impassioned days of my youth. It was there that all my wishes, all my dreams, all my joys, and all my sorrows lay.

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