Quotes by Gustav Mahler

• An operetta is simply a small and gay opera.
• A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.
• All that is not perfect down to the smallest detail is doomed to perish.
• Beauty and fullness of tone can be achieved by having the whole orchestra play with high clarinets and a carefully selected number of piccolos.
• Destiny smiles upon me but without making me the least bit happier.
• Behind me the branches of a wasted and sterile existence are cracking.
• I live like a Hottentot. I cannot exchange one sensible word with anyone.
• I was a crazy young man who let himself be blinded by his passions and obeyed only the impulses of the moment.
• If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.
• If you think you're boring your audience, go slower not faster.
• I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.
• In its beginnings, music was merely chamber music, meant to be listened to in a small space by a small audience.
• In the theatrical works we love and admire the most, the ending of the drama generally takes place offstage.
• If I weren't the way I am, I shouldn't write my symphonies.
• I hope you will no longer accuse me of a lack of delicacy. as I now count on your understanding.
• I have become a different person. I don't know whether this person is better, he certainly is not happier.
• I beg of you... never assume an inner or an outer pose, never a disguise.
• I also had a brother who was like me a musician and a composer. A man of great talent, far more gifted than I. He died very young... he killed himself in the prime of his life.
• Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested. So let us not be idle.
• It is easier to achieve a desired result in short pieces.
• Don't bother looking at the view - I have already composed it.
• Even if people censure me, they should do so hat in hand.
• I don't let myself get carried away by my own ideas - I abandon 19 out of 20 of them every day.
• The impressions of the spriritual experiences gave my future life its form and content.
• The further the music develops, the more complex the apparatus used by the composer to express his thoughts becomes.
• Discipline, work. Work, discipline.
• With the coming of spring, I am calm again.
• When I have reached a summit, I leave it with great reluctance, unless it is to reach for another, higher one.
• What I wanted and what I visualized while composing has not always been realized.
• To judge a composer's work, one must consider it as a whole.
• There is a world of difference between a Mahler eighth note and a normal eighth note.
• 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.
• The real art of conducting consists in transitions.
• It is strange how one feels drawn forward without knowing at first where one is going.
• You must renounce all superficiality, all convention, all vanity and delusion.
• The call of love sounds very hollow among these immobile rocks.
• Spring won't let me stay in this house any longer! I must get out and breathe the air deeply again.
• Never let oneself be guided by the opinion of one's contemporaries. Continue steadfastly on one's way.
• Melodic invention is one of the surest signs of a divine gift.
• It's not just a question of conquering a summit previously unknown, but of tracing, step by step, a new pathway to it.
• It should be one's sole endeavor to see everything afresh and create it anew.
• The spirit can assert itself only through the medium of clear form.
• 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.
• Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.