Richard Wagner
Divorce is one of the most financially traumatic things you can go through. Money spent on getting mad or getting even is money wasted.Collection: Finance
Imagination creates reality.Collection: Imagination
I write music with an exclamation point!Collection: Music
Richard Wagner, a musician who wrote music which is better than it sounds.Collection: Music
I can't distract myself enough here, for sketches to a new opera are constantly buzzing around in my head, to the extent that I need all my strength to wrest myself from them.Collection: Strength
Joy is not in things; it is in us.
I am fond of them, of the inferior beings of the abyss, of those who are full of longing.
I am convinced that there are universal currents of Divine Thought vibrating the ether everywhere and that any who can feel these vibrations is inspired.
Even if I know I shall never change the masses, never transform anything permanent, all I ask is that the good things also have their place, their refuge.
I have only a mind to live, to enjoy - i.e., to work as an artist, and produce my works; but not for the muddy brains of the common herd.
Achievements, seldom credited to their source, are the result of unspeakable drudgery and worries.
How absurd these critics must seem to me, who in their modern wantonness have become so ingenious. They want to interpret my Tannhauser as specifically Christian and impute to him a tendency to impotent glorification!
I wish I could score everything for horns.
The patriot subordinates himself to his State in order to raise it above all other States and thus, as it were, to find his personal sacrifice repaid with ample interest through the might and greatness of his fatherland.
I hate this fast growing tendency to chain men to machines in big factories and deprive them of all joy in their efforts - the plan will lead to cheap men and cheap products.
Wherever the fish are, that's where we go.
Life is earnest - and always has been.
I have long been convinced that my artistic ideal stands or falls with Germany. Only the Germany that we love and desire can help us achieve that ideal.
The measures and acts which show us violently disposed towards the outer world can never stay without a violent reaction on ourselves.
Everything lives and lasts by the inner necessity of its being, by its own nature's need.
I was in a state of gnawing, sensuous agitation that excited continually both blood and nerves when I sketched out the music for 'Tannhauser' and brought it to completion.
Though German art can never be Bavarian, but simply German, yet Munich is the capital of this German Art; here, under shelter of a Prince who kindles my enthusiasm, to feel myself a native and member of the people was, to me, the homeless wanderer, a deep, a genuine need.
Here, everything is tragic through and through, and the will, that fain would shape a world according to its wish, at last can reach no greater satisfaction than the breaking of itself in dignified annulment.
We find personal success and great, if not enduring, influence on the outer fashioning of the world allotted to the violent, the passionate individual who, unchaining the elemental principles of human impulse under favoring circumstances, points out to greed and self-indulgence the speedy pathways to their satisfaction.
In no State is there a weightier law than that which centers its stability in the supreme hereditary power of one particular family, unconnected and un-commingling with any other lineage in that State.
What manner of thing this 'public opinion' is, should be best known to those who have its name forever in their mouths and erect the regard for it into a positive article of religion. Its self-styled organ in our times is the 'Press.'
Music is the inarticulate speech of the heart, which cannot be compressed into words, because it is infinite.Collection: Heart
I regard the Jewish race as the born enemy of pure humanity and everything that is noble in it.Collection: Race
The purpose of art: to make the unconscious conscious.Collection: Art
It is necessary for us to explain the involuntary repugnance we possess for the nature and personality of the Jews. The Jews have never produced a true poet. Heinrich Heine reached the point where he duped himself into a poet, and was rewarded by his versified lies being set to music by our own composers. He was the conscience of Judaism, just as Judaism is the evil conscience of our modern civilization.Collection: Lying
I believe in God, Mozart and Beethoven, and likewise their disciples and apostles; - I believe in the Holy Spirit and the truth of the one, indivisible Art; - I believe that this Art proceeds from God, and lives within the hearts of all illumined men.Collection: Art
We must learn to die, and to die in the fullest sense of the word. The fear of the end is the source of all lovelessnessCollection: Ends
The language of tones belongs equally to all mankind, and melody is the absolute language in which the musician speaks to every heart.Collection: Heart
Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them.Collection: Music
The oldest, truest, most beautiful organ of music, the origin to which alone our music owes its being, is the human voice.Collection: Beautiful
The only form of music is melody, without melody music is not feasible, and music and melody are quite inseparable.Collection: Form
It is a truth forever, that where the speech of man stops short there Music's reign begins.Collection: Men
I know absolutely nothing about music.Collection: Music
My destiny is solitude, and my life is work.Collection: Work
The essence of higher instrumental music lays herein that one is able to express in tones that what one is unable to say in words.Collection: Essence
A political man is disgusting, but a political wife, horrible.Collection: Men
...music is the living God in our bosoms.Collection: Inspiration
I believe in God, Mozart, and Beethoven.Collection: Believe
These revelations expressed through Art work upon the soul with a force carrying its own conviction and permeate our sentient life with a sense of truth which logic and mere reason are powerless to combat.Collection: Art
It should not be presumed that these people (the Jews), who are so separated from us by their religion, have any right to make our laws. But why blame the Jews? It is we who lack all feeling for our own identity, all sense of honour.Collection: Law
Human dignity begins to assert itself only at the point where man is distinguishable from the beast by pity for it.Collection: Animal
What Music expresses is eternal, infinite, and ideal; she expresses not the passion, love, desire, of this or that individual in this or that condition, but Passion, Love, Desire itself, and in such infinitely varied phases as lie in her unique possession and are foreign and unknown to any other tongue...So...Here's to Victory, gained by our higher sense over the worthlessness of the vulgar! To Love, which crowns our courage...To the day, to the night!...And three cheers for Music.Collection: Music
Certain things in Mozart will and can never be excelled.Collection: Certain
Attack and defence, want and war, victory and defeat, lordship and thraldom, all sealed with the seal of blood: this from henceforth is the History of Man.Collection: War
Whatever I thought right, to others seemed wrong; what I held to be bad, others approved of.Collection: Approved