Best Quotes by Gustav Mahler (Top 10)

  1. Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.
  2. If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.
  3. What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.
  4. 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.
  5. A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.
  6. 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.
  7. I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.
  8. If you think you're boring your audience, go slower not faster.
  9. A full cup of wine at the right time is worth more than all the kingdoms of this earth!
  10. 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.

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