Best Gustav Mahler Quotes & Sayings

I hope you will no longer accuse me of a lack of delicacy. as I now count on your understanding. — Gustav Mahler

It is a funny thing, but when I am making music, all the answers I seek for in life seem to be there, in the music. Or rather, I should say, when I am making music, there are no questions and no need for answers. — Gustav Mahler

I don't let myself get carried away by my own ideas - I abandon 19 out of 20 of them every day. — Gustav Mahler

You must renounce all superficiality, all convention, all vanity and delusion. — Gustav Mahler

I live like a Hottentot. I cannot exchange one sensible word with anyone. — Gustav Mahler

A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything. — Gustav Mahler

It is easier to achieve a desired result in short pieces. — Gustav Mahler

In its beginnings, music was merely chamber music, meant to be listened to in a small space by a small audience. — Gustav Mahler

The further the music develops, the more complex the apparatus used by the composer to express his thoughts becomes. — Gustav Mahler

An operetta is simply a small and gay opera. — Gustav Mahler

Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested. So let us not be idle. — Gustav Mahler

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. — Gustav Mahler

When I have reached a summit, I leave it with great reluctance, unless it is to reach for another, higher one. — Gustav Mahler

A full cup of wine at the right time is worth more than all the kingdoms of this earth! — Gustav Mahler

To judge a composer's work, one must consider it as a whole. — Gustav Mahler

I am thrice homeless, as a bohemian, as an Austrian, and all over the world, you guessed it right I am Jewish — Gustav Mahler

Tradition is the spreading of fire and not the veneration of ashes. — Gustav Mahler

Destiny smiles upon me but without making me the least bit happier. — Gustav Mahler

What is best in music is not to be found in the notes. — Gustav Mahler

We all return. It is this certainty that gives meaning to life and it does not make the slightest difference whether or not in a later incarnation we remember the former life. What counts is not the individual and his comfort, but the great aspiration to the perfect and the pure which goes on in each incarnation. — Gustav Mahler

If you think you're boring your audience, go slower not faster. — Gustav Mahler

Tradition is laziness. — Gustav Mahler

God can only be comprehended as Love. — Gustav Mahler

I have become a different person. I don't know whether this person is better, he certainly is not happier. — Gustav Mahler

I was a crazy young man who let himself be blinded by his passions and obeyed only the impulses of the moment. — Gustav Mahler

I am thrice homeless, as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed. — Gustav Mahler

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music. — Gustav Mahler

All that is not perfect down to the smallest detail is doomed to perish. — Gustav Mahler

Man lives in greatest pain — Gustav Mahler

The call of love sounds very hollow among these immobile rocks. — Gustav Mahler

Even if people censure me, they should do so hat in hand. — Gustav Mahler

It's not just a question of conquering a summit previously unknown, but of tracing, step by step, a new pathway to it. — Gustav Mahler