Clara Schumann Quotations

Treasures are no longer to be got by instrumental art.

You appear in the Novelletten in every possible circumstance, in every irresistible form... They could only be written by one who knows such eyes as yours and has touched such lips as yours.

If I have known much trouble in my youth, I have also known much joy.

I cannot be so bad when everybody is so fond of me.

I cannot give a single concert at which I do not play one piece after the other in an agony of terror because my memory threatens to fail me. This fear torments me for days beforehand.

I do not want horses or diamonds - I am happy in possessing you.

Is an artist much more than a beggar?

My health may be better preserved if I exert myself less, but in the end doesn't each person give his life for his calling?

How often have I actually discovered in myself that enthusiasm raises the artist above himself, how in an ordinary mood one would not have been able to accomplish many of the things for which enthusiasm lends one everything, energy, fire.

The tea is ice-cold, the room grows colder and colder, but I grow warmer and warmer.