Franz Liszt Quotes
"Inspiration is enough to give expression to the tone in singing, especially when the song is without words."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Inspiration, Expression, Singing, Song, Words)
"Broad paths are open to every endeavour, and a sympathetic recognition is assured to every one who consecrates his art to the divine services of a conviction of a consciousness."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Art, Consciousness, Conviction, Open)
"A person of any mental quality has ideas of his own. This is common sense."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Quality, Ideas, Common sense)
"A theatre receives recognition through its initiative, which is indispensable for first-rate performances."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: First, Theatre)
"As the mother teaches her children how to express themselves in their language, so one Gypsy musician teaches the other. They have never shown any need for notation."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Mother, Children, Language)
"Beware of missing chances; otherwise it may be altogether too late some day."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Day, May)
"Brahms' Variations are better than mine, but mine were written before his."
- Franz Liszt
"Companions, in misery and worse, that is what we all are, and to try to change this substantially avails us nothing."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Change, Misery, Nothing)
"The music of the Gypsies belongs in the sphere of improvisation rather than in any other, without which it would have no power to exist."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Music, Power)
"Without any assistance whatever, I founded a school in Weimar in 10 years. Only I could perform certain works with the scanty means that I dared not ask anyone else to work with."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Work, School, Years)
"We need improvement in the style of performance. There is no more advantage in a musician who plays and conducts than in one who is only a beater of rhythm."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Performance, Improvement, Style)
"Truth is a great flirt."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Truth)
"The public is always good."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Public)
"I did not compose my work as one might put on a church vestment... rather it sprung from the truly fervent faith of my heart, such as I have felt it since my childhood."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Faith, Work, Heart, Church, Childhood)
"The principal task of a conductor is not to put himself in evidence but to disappear behind his functions as much as possible. We are pilots, not servants."
- Franz Liszt
"I foster a sorrowful conception of affection. Make no sacrifices."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Affection)
"The character of instrumental music... lets the emotions radiate and shine in their own character without presuming to display them as real or imaginary representations."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Music, Character, Emotions)
"Supreme serenity still remains the Ideal of great Art. The shapes and transitory forms of life are but stages toward this Ideal, which Christ's religion illuminates with His divine light."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Life, Religion, Art, Christ, Light, Serenity)
"In Hungary all native music, in its origin, is divided naturally into melody destined for song or melody for the dance."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Music, Dance, Song)
"I find little in the works of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and others when they are led by a conductor who functions like a windmill."
- Franz Liszt
"Sorrowful and great is the artist's destiny."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Artist, Destiny)
"It is impossible to imagine a more complete fusion with nature than that of the Gypsy."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Nature)
"It is my fervent wish and my greatest ambition to leave a work with a few useful instructions for the pianists after me."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Work, Ambition)
"Life is only a long and bitter suicide, and faith alone can transform this suicide into a sacrifice."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Faith, Life, Sacrifice, Suicide)
"Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Artist, Destiny)
"Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought, as it is forced in most arts and especially in the art of words."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Art, Music, Thought, Feeling, Words)
"Real men are sadly lacking in this world, for when they are put to the test they prove worthless."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Men, World)