Gustav Mahler Quotations

Don't bother looking at the view - I have already composed it.

A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.

It is strange how one feels drawn forward without knowing at first where one is going.

Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested. So let us not be idle.

Destiny smiles upon me but without making me the least bit happier.

When I have reached a summit, I leave it with great reluctance, unless it is to reach for another, higher one.

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.

The call of love sounds very hollow among these immobile rocks.

I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.

With the coming of spring, I am calm again.

Spring won't let me stay in this house any longer! I must get out and breathe the air deeply again.

I also had a brother who was like me a musician and a composer. A man of great talent, far more gifted than I. He died very young... he killed himself in the prime of his life.

The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star but to go one's way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause.

I beg of you... never assume an inner or an outer pose, never a disguise.

I have become a different person. I don't know whether this person is better, he certainly is not happier.

All that is not perfect down to the smallest detail is doomed to perish.

If you think you're boring your audience, go slower not faster.

The impressions of the spriritual experiences gave my future life its form and content.

You must renounce all superficiality, all convention, all vanity and delusion.

If I weren't the way I am, I shouldn't write my symphonies.

It's not just a question of conquering a summit previously unknown, but of tracing, step by step, a new pathway to it.

The real art of conducting consists in transitions.

I was a crazy young man who let himself be blinded by his passions and obeyed only the impulses of the moment.

Never let oneself be guided by the opinion of one's contemporaries. Continue steadfastly on one's way.

It should be one’s sole endeavor to see everything afresh and create it anew.

Behind me the branches of a wasted and sterile existence are cracking.

An operetta is simply a small and gay opera.

I live like a Hottentot. I cannot exchange one sensible word with anyone.

There is a world of difference between a Mahler eighth note and a normal eighth note.

I hope you will no longer accuse me of a lack of delicacy. as I now count on your understanding.

In its beginnings, music was merely chamber music, meant to be listened to in a small space by a small audience.

Melodic invention is one of the surest signs of a divine gift.

The spirit can assert itself only through the medium of clear form.

The longer you live and the more you learn, the more clearly you will feel the difference between the few men who are truly great and the mere virtuosi.

Even if people censure me, they should do so hat in hand.

Beauty and fullness of tone can be achieved by having the whole orchestra play with high clarinets and a carefully selected number of piccolos.

I don't let myself get carried away by my own ideas - I abandon 19 out of 20 of them every day.

It is easier to achieve a desired result in short pieces.

The further the music develops, the more complex the apparatus used by the composer to express his thoughts becomes.

To judge a composer's work, one must consider it as a whole.

What I wanted and what I visualized while composing has not always been realized.

In the theatrical works we love and admire the most, the ending of the drama generally takes place offstage.

Fortissimo at last!( on seeing Niagara Falls )

A true "personality" . . . is like a robust organism that, with unconscious sureness, seeks out and digests the nourishment appropriate to it and vigorously rejects that which is unsuitable.

Can this be endured at all? Won't people kill themselves afterwards?

The important thing is never to let oneself be guided by the opinion of one's contemporaries; to continue steadfastly on one's way without letting oneself be either defeated by failure or diverted by applause.

Life's been nothing but paperwork.

A true personality . . . is like a robust organism that, with unconscious sureness, seeks out and digests the nourishment appropriate to it and vigorously rejects that which is unsuitable.

Don't bother to look, I've composed all this already.

God can only be comprehended as Love.

Tradition is the spreading of fire and not the veneration of ashes.

It is always the same with me; only when I experience something do I compose, and only when composing do I experience! After all, a musician's nature can hardly be expressed in words.

Tradition is laziness.

I don't let myself get carried away by my own ideas; I abandon 19 out of 20 of them every day.

My time will come, that is: after the finish of the recurring song cycles

Both my marriages were failures! Number one departed, and number two stayed

Tradition is tending the flame, not worshiping the ashes.

Only when I experience do I compose - only when I compose do I experience.

A full cup of wine at the right time is worth more than all the kingdoms of this earth!

In Bach, the vital cells of music are united as the world is in God.

Discipline, work. Work, discipline.

I am thrice homeless, as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed.

To write a symphony is, for me, to construct a world.

I don't choose what I compose. It chooses me.

For the last month I have been a strict vegetarian. The moral effects of this regime are immense, owing to the voluntary subjugation of the flesh and the resulting absence of desires. You will appreciate how full I am of this idea when I tell you that I expect it to work the regeneration of mankind. I advise you to change over to a natural way of life, with proper nourishment (wholemeal bread), and you will soon feel the benefit.

Spring won't let me stay in this house any longer! I must get out and breathe the air deeply again.

I am thrice homeless, as a bohemian, as an Austrian, and all over the world, you guessed it right I am Jewish

But it's peculiar, as soon as I am in the midst of nature and by myself, everything that is base and trivial vanishes without trace. On such days nothing scares me; and this helps me again and again.

We all return. It is this certainty that gives meaning to life and it does not make the slightest difference whether or not in a later incarnation we remember the former life. What counts is not the individual and his comfort, but the great aspiration to the perfect and the pure which goes on in each incarnation.

What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.

That which draws us by its mystical force; what every created thing, even the very stones, feels with absolute certainty as the center of its being... is the force of love. Christians call this "eternal blessedness." It is a necessity of man for growth and joy.

Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.

It is a funny thing, but when I am making music, all the answers I seek for in life seem to be there, in the music. Or rather, I should say, when I am making music, there are no questions and no need for answers.