Richard Wagner famous quotes

Joy is not in things; it is in us.
-- Richard Wagner

#Positivity #Joy

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.
-- Richard Wagner

#Dream #Sound #Poor

I write music with an exclamation point!
-- Richard Wagner

#Music #Writing #Exclamation

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

#Divorce #Mad #Heartfelt

I am fond of them, of the inferior beings of the abyss, of those who are full of longing.
-- Richard Wagner

#Affection #Longing #Abyss

Imagination creates reality.
-- Richard Wagner

#Inspiring #Reality #Imagination

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

#Beautiful #Voice #Humans

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

#Men #Forever #Speech

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

#Heart #Tone #Musician

I wish I could score everything for horns.
-- Richard Wagner

#Horny #Wish #Horns

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

#Vibrations #Inspired #Divine

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.
-- Richard Wagner

#Change #Good Things #Mass

Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them.
-- Richard Wagner

#Musical #Looks #Trombone

My destiny is solitude, and my life is work.
-- Richard Wagner

#Work #Destiny #Solitude

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

#Karma #Views #Reincarnation

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.
-- Richard Wagner

#War #Men #Blood

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

#Life #Wise #Men

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.
-- Richard Wagner

#Hate #Men #Effort

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

#Men #Impossible #Hopeless

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...
-- Richard Wagner

#Cheer #Lying #Passion

I know nothing at all about music.
-- Richard Wagner

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.
-- Richard Wagner

#Song #Other Worlds #Humanity

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.
-- Richard Wagner

#Art #Drama #Discovery

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

#Duty #Ability #Tempo

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.
-- Richard Wagner

#Law #People #Feelings

I believe in God, Mozart, and Beethoven.
-- Richard Wagner

#Believe #I Believe #Believe In God

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.
-- Richard Wagner

#Lying #Civilization #Evil

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.
-- Richard Wagner

#Art #Drama #Mean

A political man is disgusting, but a political wife, horrible.
-- Richard Wagner

#Men #Wife #Political

Certain things in Mozart will and can never be excelled.
-- Richard Wagner

#Certain

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.
-- Richard Wagner

#Men #Race #Land

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

#Writing #Wife #Spirit

The purpose of art: to make the unconscious conscious.
-- Richard Wagner

#Art #Purpose #Conscious

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

#Love #Inspiring #Heart

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.
-- Richard Wagner

#Art #Believe #Profound

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

#Worry #Achievement #Source

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

#Musician #Sound #Wagner

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.
-- Richard Wagner

#Art #Truth #Believe

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.
-- Richard Wagner

#Crazy #Long #Vision

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

#Fishing #Fishes

...music is the living God in our bosoms.
-- Richard Wagner

#Inspiration #Contemplation #Music Is

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.
-- Richard Wagner

#Motivational #Reality #Imagination

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

#Art #Might #Spirit

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
-- Richard Wagner

#Ends #Source #Lovelessness

I know absolutely nothing about music.
-- Richard Wagner

#Music

The immoral profession of musical criticism must be abolished.
-- Richard Wagner

#Music #Criticism #Immoral

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

#Compassion #Animal #Fundamentals

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.
-- Richard Wagner

#Jesus #Wine #Animal

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

#Animal #Men #Dignity

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

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

#Heart #Thinking #Speech

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.
-- Richard Wagner

#Fall #Long #Desire