Edward Elgar Quotations

The Spirit of God is not something less than God, - it is God.

I always said God was against art and I still believe it.

It is curious to be treated by the old-fashioned people as a criminal because my thoughts and ways are beyond them.

English music is white - it evades everything.

An Englishman will take you into a large room, beautifully proportioned, and will point out to you that it is white- all over white- and somebody will say what exquisite taste. You know in your own mind, in your own soul, that it is not taste at all˘that is the want of taste˘that is mere evasion. English music is white and evades everything.

The music is in the air. Take as much as you want.

I always said God was against art and I still believe it. Anything obscene or trivial is blessed in this world and has a reward - I ask for no reward - only to live & to hear my work.

People who talk of the spread of music in England and the increasing love of it, rarely seem to know where the growth of the art is really strong and properly fostered: some day the press will awake to the fact, already known abroad and to some few of us in England, that the living centre of music in Great Britain is not London, but somewhere further North.

My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require.