Frederic Chopin
Man is never always happy, and very often only a brief period of happiness is granted him in this world; so why escape from this dream which cannot last long?Collection: Happiness
As long as I have health and strength, I will gladly work all my days.Collection: Health
Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.Collection: Art
I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness, but I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them.Collection: Happiness
Sometimes I can only groan, and suffer, and pour out my despair at the piano!
I shall create a new world for myself.
Oh, how miserable it is to have no one to share your sorrows and joys, and, when your heart is heavy, to have no soul to whom you can pour out your woes.
The crowd intimidates me, its breath suffocates me. I feel paralyzed by its curious look, and the unknown faces make me dumb.
Vienna is a handsome, lively city, and pleases me exceedingly.
Oh, how hard it must be to die anywhere but in one's birthplace.
If the newspapers cut me up so much that I shall not venture before the world again, I have resolved to become a house painter; that would be as easy as anything else, and I should, at any rate, still be an artist!
Bach is like an astronomer who, with the help of ciphers, finds the most wonderful stars . . . Beethoven embraced the universe with the power of his spirit . . . I do not climb so high. A long time ago I decided that my universe will be the soul and heart of man.Collection: Stars
Nothing is more odious than music without hidden meaning.Collection: Hidden Meaning
Put all your soul into it, play the way you feel!Collection: Life
I tell my piano the things I used to tell youCollection: Piano
Time is the best of critics; and patience the best of teachers.Collection: Teacher
Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties.Collection: Practice
Even in winter it shall be green in my heart.Collection: Love
The last thing is simplicity. After having gone through all the difficulties, having played an endless number of notes, it is simplicity that matters, with all its charm. It is the final seal on Art. Anyone who strives for this to begin with will be disappointed. You cannot begin at the end.Collection: Art
Sometimes I can only groan, and suffer, and pour out my despair at the piano.Collection: Life
Nothing is more beautiful than a guitar, except, possibly two.Collection: Beautiful
It is dreadful when something weighs on your mind, not to have a soul to unburden yourself to. You know what I mean. I tell my piano the things I used to tell you.Collection: Life
A long time ago I decided that my universe will be the soul and heart of man.Collection: Heart
Bach is an astronomer, discovering the most marvellous stars. Beethoven challenges the universe. I only try to express the soul and the heart of man.Collection: Stars
I am gay on the outside, especially among my own folk (I count Poles my own); but inside something gnaws at me; some presentiment, anxiety, dreams - or sleeplessness - melancholy, indifference - desire for life, and the next instant, desire for death; some kind of sweet peace, some kind of numbness, absent-mindedness.Collection: Life
Simplicity is the final achievement.Collection: Simplicity
Play Mozart in memory of me - and I will hear you.Collection: Death
Concerts are never real music, you have to give up the idea of hearing in them all the most beautiful things of art.Collection: Beautiful
I am not fitted to give concerts. The audience intimidates me, I feel choked by its breath, paralyzed by its curious glances, struck dumb by all those strange faces.Collection: Music
We fell silent and all joking ceased. We gazed mutely into each other's eyes and an intense longing for the fullest avowal of the truth forced us to a confession, requiring no words whatever, or the incommensurable misfortune that weighed upon us. With tears and sobs we sealed a vow to belong to each other alone.Collection: Love
The three most celebrated doctors on the island have been to see me. One sniffed at what I spat, the second tapped where I spat from, and the third sounded me and listened as I spat. The first said I was dead, the second that I was dying and the third that I'm going to die.Collection: Death
The earth is suffocating... Swear to make them cut me open, so that I won't be buried alive.Collection: Cutting
I'm a revolutionary, money means nothing to me.Collection: Life
A strange adventure befell me while I was playing my Sonata in B flat minor before some English friends. I had played the Allegro and the Scherzo more or less correctly. I was about to attack the March when suddenly I saw arising from the body of my piano those cursed creatures which had appeared to me one lugubrious night at the Chartreuse. I had to leave for one instant to pull myself together after which I continued without saying anything.Collection: Adventure
I could express my feelings more easily if they could be put into the notes of music, but as the very best concert would not cover my affection for you, dear daddy, I must use the simple words of my heart, to lay before you my utmost gratitude and filial affectionCollection: Gratitude
One needs only to study a certain positioning of the hand in relation to the keys to obtain with ease the most beautiful sounds, to know how to play long notes and short notes and to achieve certain unlimited dexterity. A well formed technique, it seems to me, can control and vary a beautiful sound quality.Collection: Beautiful
I don't know how it is, but the Germans are amazed at me and I am amazed at them for finding anything to be amazed about.Collection: People
If I were still stupider than I am, I should think myself at the apex of my career; yet I know how much I still lack, to reach perfection; I see it the more clearly now that I live only among first-rank artists and know what each one of them lacks.Collection: Life
Liszt commenting on the music of Frédéric Chopin: He confided . . . those inexpressible sorrows to which the pious give vent in their communication with their Maker. What they never say except upon their knees, he said in his palpitating compositions.Collection: Music
After a rest in Edinburgh, where, passing a music-shop, I heard some blind man playing a mazurka of mine.Collection: Men
When one does a thing, it appears good, otherwise one would not write it. Only later comes reflection, and one discards or accepts the thing. Time is the best censor, and patience a most excellent teacher.Collection: Life
To be a great composer requires immense experience... One acquires this by listening not only to other men's work, but above all to one's own!Collection: Music
I haven't heard anything so great for a long time; Beethoven snaps his fingers at the whole world.Collection: Long
There are certain times when I feel more inspired, filled with a strong power that forces me to listen to my inner voice, and when I feel more need than ever for a Pleyel piano.Collection: Strong
My manuscripts sleep, while I cannot, for I am covered with poultices.Collection: Death
The Official Bulletin declared that the Poles should be as proud of me as the Germans are of Mozart; obvious nonsense.Collection: People
As something has involuntarily crept into my head through my eyes,I love to indulge it, even though it may be all wrong.Collection: Eye
I have met a great celebrity, Madame Dudevant, known as George Sand... Her appearance is not to my liking. Indeed there is something about her which positively repels me... What an unattractive person La Sand is... Is she really a woman? I'm inclined to doubt it.Collection: People
Among the numerous pleasures of Vienna the hotel evenings are famous. During supper Strauss or Lanner play waltzes...After every waltz they get huge applause; and if they play a Quodlibet, or jumble of opera, song and dance, the hearers are so overjoyed that they don't know what to do with themselves. It shows the corrupt taste of the Viennese public.Collection: Song