Johannes Brahms famous quotes

04-17-2025

Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Inspirational #Inspiring #Wind
The only true immortality lies in one's children.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Children #Lying #Immortality
The idea comes to me from outside of me - and is like a gift. I then take the idea and make it my own - that is where the skill lies.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Lying #Skills #Ideas
If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted, I beg his pardon.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Leaving #Insult #Pardon
A symphony is no joke.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Symphony #Jokes
Straight-away the ideas flow in upon me, directly from God, and not only do I see distinct themes in my mind's eye, but they are clothed in the right forms, harmonies, and orchestration.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Eye #Ideas #Mind
Those who enjoy their own emotionally bad health and who habitually fill their own minds with the rank poisons of suspicion, jealousy and hatred, as a rule take umbrage at those who refuse to do likewise, and they find a perverted relief in trying to denigrate them.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Jealousy #Hatred #Mind
Study Bach. There you will find everything.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Study
Ah, that tastes nice. Thank you.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Nice #Dying #Taste
It is not hard to compose, but what is fabulously hard is to leave the superfluous notes under the table.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Tables #Fabulous #Notes
How lucky is the man who, like Mozart and others, goes to the tavern of an evening and writes some fresh music. For he lives while he is creating.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Writing #Men #Creating
Straightaway the ideas flow in upon me, directly from God.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Ideas #Flow
My things really are written with an appalling lack of practicality!
-- Johannes Brahms

#Practicality
Reviewer: 'One of your themes was very similar to one of Beethoven's!' Brahms replied, 'Of course it is. Everyone steals - the important thing is to do it brilliantly.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Important #Copying #Stealing
I sometimes ponder on variation form and it seems to me it ought to be more restrained, purer.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Variation #Sometimes #Form
In him converge all previous streams of tendency, not as into a pool, stagnant, passive, motionless, but as a noble river that received its tributary waters and bearss them onward in larger and statelier volume.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Music #Rivers #Water
Never criticize the composition of a Royal Highness. You never know who may have written it.
-- Johannes Brahms

#May #Royal #Criticize
Those are miracles that no merely human brain can work. The artist is merely the sound conduct of a Force that dictates to him what he should do.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Music #Artist #Miracle
The fact that most people do not understand and respect the very best things, such as Mozart's concertos, is what permits men like us to become famous.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Men #People #Facts
Composers in the old days used to keep strictly to the base of the theme, as their real subject. Beethoven varies the melody, harmony and rhythms so beautifully.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Real #Harmony #Theme
We cling nervously to the melody, but we don't handle it freely, we don't really make anything new out of it, we merely overload it.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Melody #Handle
One should never forget that by actually perfecting one piece one gains and learns more than by starting or half-finishing a dozen.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Life And Love #Gains #Finishing

You may also like:

Antonin Dvorak
Composer
Clara Schumann
Musician
Claude Debussy
Composer
Felix Mendelssohn
Composer
Franz Liszt
Composer
Franz Schubert
Composer
Frederic Chopin
Composer
George Frideric Handel
Composer
Gustav Mahler
Composer
Hector Berlioz
Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach
Composer
Joseph Haydn
Composer
Ludwig van Beethoven
Composer
Maurice Ravel
Composer
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Composer
Richard Strauss
Composer
Richard Wagner
Composer
Robert Schumann
Composer
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Composer
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Composer