Ignacy Jan Paderewski Quotes

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

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

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.

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

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

Rhythm is the pulse of music.

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

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.

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

Before I was a genius I was a drudge.

The very essence of success is practice.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Art without technique is invertebrate, shapeless, characterless.

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!

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

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

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

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.

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.

Art must be a slow and normal evolution.

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

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

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.

Fatherland before everything, art afterward.

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?

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