Richard Wagner Quotations

Joy is not in things; it is in us.

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.

Richard Wagner, a musician who wrote music which is better than it sounds.

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 am fond of them, of the inferior beings of the abyss, of those who are full of longing.

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.

I wish I could score everything for horns.

Divorce is one of the most financially traumatic things you can go through. Money spent on getting mad or getting even is money wasted.

Wherever the fish are, that's where we go.

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.

Achievements, seldom credited to their source, are the result of unspeakable drudgery and worries.

One supreme fact which I have discovered is that it is not willpower, but fantasy-imagination that creates. Imagination is the creative force. Imagination creates reality.

Freshly blows the wind homewards: my Irish child, where are you dwelling?

Little steps are being taken that may be in the right direction, ... It's the rate of progress I'm concerned about.

True Drama is only conceivable as proceeding from a common urgency of every art towards the most direct appeal to a common public. In this Drama, each separate art can only bare its utmost secret to their common public through a mutual parleying with the other arts; for the purpose of each separate branch of art can only be fully attained by the reciprocal agreement and co-operation of all the branches in their common message.

Every year I get fantastic deals on restaurant gift certificates and art, while supporting an organization that does great work in our community,

The gourmet food alone is worth the $20 entrance fee.

Even people with severely damaged skin say they can't stop, ... The behavior observed was similar to that of smokers.

Quite a few said they would sit out in the back yard or go to a pool in order to maintain their tan,

After Rossini dies, who will there be to promote his music?

You meet people, you make friends. It's a social thing too. You talk to those you are friends with and those who are not as interesting, you go separate ways. It's a lot of fun and we enjoy doing it. We usually have a very good time.

This is a new idea, and we didn't know how it would turn out, although there has been mixed evidence from other studies suggesting that tanning increases endorphin production, which could be addictive, ... Certainly this could explain why educational interventions haven't been more successful.

Dermatologists often talk about people who seem 'addicted' to the sun people who know it's not good for them to be bronzed all the time, but don't seem able to stop tanning, ... It's interesting that by slightly modifying tools used to identify substance-related disorders, we can see an objective similarity between regular tanning and those disorders.

If you have a better defensive system, the attacker has to work that much harder, recruit more people, put on more shielding, ... The bigger the operation gets, the better chance our people have of detecting and stopping it.

Certainly this (study on addictive nature of tanning) could explain why educational interventions haven't been more successful.

I believe in the program. I think it's a good thing when producers of any agricultural commodity can get together voluntarily.

...music is the living God in our bosoms.

Certain things in Mozart will and can never be excelled.

I am writing Parsifal only for my wife - if I had to depend on the German spirit, I should have nothing more to say.

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.

If experiments on animals were abandoned on grounds of compassion, mankind would have made a fundamental advance.

The long-term vision is to replace, repair and regenerate failing tissues and organs with the materials of tissues and organs. It's still 'out there,' but it's possible to put together a grant proposal now that doesn't sound completely crazy.

In contrast to reincarnation and karma, all other views seem petty and narrow

Human dignity begins to assert itself only at the point where man is distinguishable from the beast by pity for it.

Plant life instead of animal food is the keystone of regeneration. Jesus used bread instead of flesh and wine in place of blood at the Lord's Supper.

The immoral profession of musical criticism must be abolished.

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 lovelessness

What a wonderful work Wagner has done for humanity in translating the toil of life into the readable script of music! For those who seek the tale of other worlds his magic is silent; but earth-travail under his wand becomes instinct with rhythmic song to an accompaniment of the elements, and the blare and crash of the bottomless pit itself.

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...

Whatever my passions demand of me, I become for the time being - musician, poet, director, author, lecturer or anything else.

That even in its sharpest pangs of pain a dog can still caress its master we have learnt from the studies of vivisectors.

Any so-called stimulus program is a ruse. The government can increase its spending only by reducing private spending equivalently.

The most tremendous genius raised Mozart above all masters, in all centuries and in all the arts.

Music truely has to all other arts the same relation as religion to the church.

Blessed be, the genius who never knew good fortune! Genius in itself already means so much; what meaning does luck still hold for him?

I know nothing at all about music.

True drama can be conceived only as resulting from the collective impulse of all the arts to communicate in the most immediate way with a collective public... Thus especially the art of tone, developed with such singular diversity in instrumental music, will realize in the collective artwork its richest potential -- will indeed incite the pantomimic art of dancing in turn to wholly new discoveries and inspire the breath of poetry no less to an undreamed-of fullness. For in its isolation music has formed itself an organ capable of the most immeasurable expression - the orchestra.

The whole duty of a conductor is comprised in his ability to indicate the right tempo.

...you know my faithfulness to you, never can another own my heart, never - never - never...

It is impossible to communicate with Schumann. The man is hopeless; he doesn't talk at all.

A political man is disgusting, but a political wife, horrible.

The error in the art-genre of Opera consists herein: a Means of expression (Music) has been made the end, while the End of expression (the Drama) has been made a means.

I believe in God, Mozart, and Beethoven.

From its first faint glimmerings, History shews Man's constant progress as a beast of prey. As such he conquers every land, subdues the fruit-fed races, founds mighty realms by subjugating other subjugators, forms states and sets up civilisations, to enjoy his prey at rest.

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.

One siupreme fact which I have discovered is that it is not willpower, but fantasy and imagination that ceates. Imagination is the creative force. Imagination creates reality.

I know absolutely nothing about music.

For once you are going to hear a dream, a dream that I have made sound... I dreamed all this; never could my poor head have invented such a thing.

Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them.

The only form of music is melody, without melody music is not feasible, and music and melody are quite inseparable.

Whether government finances its added spending by increasing taxes, by borrowing, or by inflating the currency, the added spending will be offset by reduced private spending. Furthermore, private spending is generally more efficient than the government spending that would replace it because people act more carefully when they spend their own money than when they spend other people's money.

When religion becomes artificial, art has a duty to rescue it. Art can show that the symbols which religions would have us believe literally true are actually figurative. Art can idealize those symbols, and so reveal the profound truths they contain.

Those who grasp the whole, will also comprehend all parts of that whole, even when immediate technical understanding is lacking, and recognize and marshal these.

Whatever I thought right, to others seemed wrong; what I held to be bad, others approved of.

It is a truth forever, that where the speech of man stops short there Music's reign begins.

The oldest, truest, most beautiful organ of music, the origin to which alone our music owes its being, is the human voice.

Many's the man/ who thought himself wise/ but what he needed/ he did not know...

The sounds proceeding from the instruments of symphonic music seem to be the very organs of the mysteries of creation; for they reveal, as it were, the primal stirrings of creation which brought order out of chaos long before the human heart was there to behold them.

My destiny is solitude, and my life is work.

The language of tones belongs equally to all mankind, and melody is the absolute language in which the musician speaks to every heart.

The purpose of art: to make the unconscious conscious.

I regard the Jewish race as the born enemy of pure humanity and everything that is noble in it.

One might say that where Religion becomes artificial, it is reserved for Art to save the spirit of religion.

Imagination creates reality.

I write music with an exclamation point!

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; - I believe that he who once has bathed in the sublime delights of this high Art, is consecrate to Her for ever, and never can deny Her; - I believe that through Art all men are saved.

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.

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.

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.

Music is the inarticulate speech of the heart, which cannot be compressed into words, because it is infinite.