Gustav Mahler Quotes

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Gustav Mahler

Profession : Composer

Birth : July 7, 1860

With the coming of spring, I am calm again.

Gustav Mahler

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

Gustav Mahler

The real art of conducting consists in transitions.

Gustav Mahler

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

Gustav Mahler

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.

Gustav Mahler

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

Gustav Mahler

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

Gustav Mahler

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

Gustav Mahler

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

Gustav Mahler

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.

Gustav Mahler

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.

Gustav Mahler

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

Gustav Mahler

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

Gustav Mahler

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

Gustav Mahler

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

Gustav Mahler

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

Gustav Mahler

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

Gustav Mahler

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

Gustav Mahler

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

Gustav Mahler

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

Gustav Mahler