Top 64 Richard Wagner Quotes
#1. Whatever I thought right, to others seemed wrong; what I held to be bad, others approved of.
Richard Wagner
#2. The essence of higher instrumental music lays herein that one is able to express in tones that what one is unable to say in words.
Richard Wagner
#3. 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
#4. The purpose of art: to make the unconscious conscious.
Richard Wagner
#6. Richard Wagner, a musician who wrote music which is better than it sounds.
Richard Wagner
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. Human dignity begins to assert itself only at the point where man is distinguishable from the beast by pity for it.
Richard Wagner
#10. Certain things in Mozart will and can never be excelled.
Richard Wagner
#11. 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
#12. If experiments on animals were abandoned on grounds of compassion, mankind would have made a fundamental advance.
Richard Wagner
#13. 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
#15. The only form of music is melody, without melody music is not feasible, and music and melody are quite inseparable.
Richard Wagner
#16. Parsifal is on his way to the temple of the Grail Knights and says: "I hardly move, yet far I seem to have come", and the all-knowing Gurnemanz replies: "You see, my son, time turns here into space
Richard Wagner
#17. I know of only one composer who measures up to Beethoven, and that is Bruckner.
Richard Wagner
#18. What was infinitely more valuable to Wagner, and what excited his gratitude to even more superlative utterance, was the confidence which Liszt showed in his genius, and without which, it is no exaggeration to say, Wagner's greatest works would probably have remained unwritten.
Richard Wagner
#20. 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
#22. But then such a book as this is not meant to amuse.
Richard Wagner
#23. The whole duty of a conductor is comprised in his ability to indicate the right tempo.
Richard Wagner
#24. These revelations expressed through Art work upon the soul with a force carrying its own conviction and permeate our sentient life with a sense of truth which logic and mere reason are powerless to combat.
Richard Wagner
#25. 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
#26. Music truely has to all other arts the same relation as religion to the church.
Richard Wagner
#27. A political man is disgusting, but a political wife, horrible.
Richard Wagner
#28. 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
#30. One might say that where Religion becomes artificial, it is reserved for Art to save the spirit of religion.
Richard Wagner
#31. The most tremendous genius raised Mozart above all masters,
in all centuries and in all the arts.
Richard Wagner
#33. I regard the Jewish race as the born enemy of pure humanity and everything that is noble in it.
Richard Wagner
#34. Those who grasp the whole, will also comprehend all parts of that whole, even when immediate technical understanding is lacking, and recognize and marshal these.
Richard Wagner
#35. 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
#36. Achievements, seldom credited to their source, are the result of unspeakable drudgery and worries.
Richard Wagner
#38. Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them.
Richard Wagner
#39. It is a truth forever, that where the speech of man stops short there Music's reign begins.
Richard Wagner
#41. 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
#42. The immoral profession of musical criticism must be abolished.
Richard Wagner
#43. 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
#45. Music is the inarticulate speech of the heart, which cannot be compressed into words, because it is infinite.
Richard Wagner
#47. The oldest, truest, most beautiful organ of music, the origin to which alone our music owes its being, is the human voice.
Richard Wagner
#48. Whatever my passions demand of me, I become for the time being - musician, poet, director, author, lecturer or anything else.
Richard Wagner
#49. Blessed be, the genius who never knew good fortune! Genius in itself already means so much; what meaning does luck still hold for him?
Richard Wagner
#50. Any so-called stimulus program is a ruse. The government can increase its spending only by reducing private spending equivalently.
Richard Wagner
#51. 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
#52. That even in its sharpest pangs of pain a dog can still caress its master we have learnt from the studies of vivisectors.
Richard Wagner
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. You know my faithfulness to you, never can another own my heart, never - never - never ...
Richard Wagner
#58. It is impossible to communicate with Schumann. The man is hopeless; he doesn't talk at all.
Richard Wagner
#59. Many's the man/ who thought himself wise/ but what he needed/ he did not know ...
Richard Wagner
#60. In contrast to reincarnation and karma, all other views seem petty and narrow
Richard Wagner
#61. The French idea of playing an instrument well is to be able to SING well upon it.
Richard Wagner
#62. I am fond of them, of the inferior beings of the abyss, of those who are full of longing.
Richard Wagner
#63. 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
#64. The sounds proceeding from the instruments of symphonic music seem to be the very organs of the mysteries of creation; for they reveal, as it were, the primal stirrings of creation which brought order out of chaos long before the human heart was there to behold them.
Richard Wagner
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