Ignacy Jan Paderewski Quotations

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

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

Musical expression is never primarily national, but is personal and individual rather. It is so deep, so profound, that it goes beyond and below nationality and gives voice to the most private feeling. In music there is never exact heredity. Each man is an individual.

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

It is not from choice that my life is music and nothing more, but when one is an artist what else can he be? When a whole lifetime is too short to attain the heights he wants to reach, how then can he devote any of the little time he has to things outside of his art?

Is there anything more true than human pain? Is there anything more sincere than the cry for help from those who suffer? Only a great wave of mankind's pity can surmount an immense wave of human misery?

Intellectual isolation always follows commercial isolation.

I loved your country [America] before I knew it.

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

I am nothing! If you could know the dream of what I would like to be, you would realize how little I have accomplished.

I am inclined to believe that some music, like certain poetry, finds its appeal and way to all.

Fatherland before everything, art afterward.

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.

Before I was a genius I was a drudge.

If I don't practise for one day, I know it; if I don't practise for two days, the critics knows it; if I don't practise for three days, the audience knows 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.

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.

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

Music expresses first of all sadness rather than joy.

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

The mere fact of knowing that a great audience waits on your labor is enough to shake all your nerves to pieces.

The very essence of success is practice.

The great familiar musical works are always greeted by the audiences as ever welcome and beloved friends.

Times change, people change, thought and feeling take new shapes, put on fresh garments, sons bow their heads unwillingly to that which enraptured their fathers.

True originality has its foundations in the soul, not in the mind, and when there is an effort to create something different it is usually a failure. Beethoven or Schumann or Chopin did not try to be original. They were original.

There have been a few moments when I have known complete satisfaction, but only a few. I have rarely been free from the disturbing realization that my playing might have been better.

Rhythm is the pulse of music.

America, the country of my heart, my second home.

Art is the expression of the immortal part of man.

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

Art without technique is invertebrate, shapeless, characterless.

Beginnings play their prized part in every finished human accomplishment, for beginnings mean the birth of added progress.

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.

Chopin was an invalid, as you know, but his music was volcanic.

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.

Music is the only art that actually lives.

Every new generation in its hour of dawn, filled with the dreams of youth, its thirsts, intoxications and enthusiasms, thinks itself called upon to impel humanity towards heights unmeasured, believes itself an appointed pathfinder, a thinker of thoughts, a doer of deeds greater than any of those which came before. Every new generation desires beauty, but a beauty all its own.

Art must be a slow and normal evolution.

There flows throughout our whole history a stream of humanity, of generosity, of tolerance, so broad, so powerful, and so pure that it would be vain indeed to look for a similar one in the past of any other European country.

The ultimate necessity is the summoning of the mind and will to do their duty.

I do not believe, as do so many musicians, that genius should be left to fight its way to the light. Genius is too rare, too precious, to be permitted to waste the best years of life--the years of youth and lofty dreams--in a heart-breaking struggle for bread. To starve the soul with the body is to do worse than murder. Think, too, of what the public loses!

The Pole listening to Chopin listens to the voice of his whole race.

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.

When one is an artist, what else can he be?

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

If I miss one day of practice, I notice it. If I miss two days, the critics notice it. If I miss three days, the audience notices it.