Gustav Mahler Quotes

I don't choose what I compose. It chooses me.

When I have reached a summit, I leave it with great reluctance, unless it is to reach for another, higher one.

You must renounce all superficiality, all convention, all vanity and delusion.

In Bach, the vital cells of music are united as the world is in God.

Beauty and fullness of tone can be achieved by having the whole orchestra play with high clarinets and a carefully selected number of piccolos.

All that is not perfect down to the smallest detail is doomed to perish.

It is strange how one feels drawn forward without knowing at first where one is going.

We all return. It is this certainty that gives meaning to life and it does not make the slightest difference whether or not in a later incarnation we remember the former life. What counts is not the individual and his comfort, but the great aspiration to the perfect and the pure which goes on in each incarnation.

Don't bother looking at the view - I have already composed it.

Spring won't let me stay in this house any longer! I must get out and breathe the air deeply again.

If you think you're boring your audience, go slower not faster.

Behind me the branches of a wasted and sterile existence are cracking.

I have become a different person. I don't know whether this person is better, he certainly is not happier.

Melodic invention is one of the surest signs of a divine gift.

Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.

I was a crazy young man who let himself be blinded by his passions and obeyed only the impulses of the moment.

I am thrice homeless, as a bohemian, as an Austrian, and all over the world, you guessed it right I am Jewish

Both my marriages were failures! Number one departed, and number two stayed

My time will come, that is: after the finish of the recurring song cycles

For the last month I have been a strict vegetarian. The moral effects of this regime are immense, owing to the voluntary subjugation of the flesh and the resulting absence of desires. You will appreciate how full I am of this idea when I tell you that I expect it to work the regeneration of mankind. I advise you to change over to a natural way of life, with proper nourishment (wholemeal bread), and you will soon feel the benefit.

That which draws us by its mystical force; what every created thing, even the very stones, feels with absolute certainty as the center of its being ... is the force of love. Christians call this "eternal blessedness." It is a necessity of man for growth and joy.

I beg of you ... never assume an inner or an outer pose, never a disguise.

In its beginnings, music was merely chamber music, meant to be listened to in a small space by a small audience.

It is a funny thing, but when I am making music, all the answers I seek for in life seem to be there, in the music. Or rather, I should say, when I am making music, there are no questions and no need for answers.

I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.

The impressions of the spriritual experiences gave my future life its form and content.

The important thing is never to let oneself be guided by the opinion of one's contemporaries; to continue steadfastly on one's way without
letting oneself be either defeated by failure or diverted by applause.

It's not just a question of conquering a summit previously unknown, but of tracing, step by step, a new pathway to it.

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.

The further the music develops, the more complex the apparatus used by the composer to express his thoughts becomes.

But it's peculiar, as soon as I am in the midst of nature and by myself, everything that is base and trivial vanishes without trace. On such days nothing scares me; and this helps me again and again.

Don't bother to look, I've composed all this already.

God can only be comprehended as Love.

Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,
Mit der ich sonst viele Zeit verdorben,
Sie hat so lange [von mir nichts]1 vernommen,
Sie mag wohl glauben, ich sei gestorben.

Es ist mir auch gar nichts daran gelegen,
Ob sie mich für gestorben hält,
Ich kann auch gar nichts sagen dagegen,
Denn wirklich bin ich gestorben der Welt.

Ich bin gestorben dem [Weltgewimmel]2,
Und ruh' in einem stillen Gebiet.
Ich leb' allein [in mir und meinem]3 Himmel,
In meinem Lieben, in meinem Lied.

I am lost to the world
with which I used to waste so much time,
It has heard nothing from me for so long
that it may very well believe that I am dead!

It is of no consequence to me
Whether it thinks me dead;
I cannot deny it,
for I really am dead to the world.

I am dead to the world's tumult,
And I rest in a quiet realm!
I live alone in my heaven,
In my love and in my song.

I live like a Hottentot. I cannot exchange one sensible word with anyone.

A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.

Only when I experience do I compose - only when I compose do I experience.

Man lives in greatest pain

The call of love sounds very hollow among these immobile rocks.

It is always the same with me; only when I experience something do I compose, and only when composing do I experience! After all, a musician's nature can hardly be expressed in words.

Even if people censure me, they should do so hat in hand.

To judge a composer's work, one must consider it as a whole.

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.

It is easier to achieve a desired result in short pieces.

In the theatrical works we love and admire the most, the ending of the drama generally takes place offstage.

The real art of conducting consists in transitions.

Never let oneself be guided by the opinion of one's contemporaries. Continue steadfastly on one's way.

To write a symphony is, for me, to construct a world.

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.