Top 57 Mendelssohn's Quotes
#1. The Germans have four violin concertos. The greatest, most uncompromising is Beethoven's. The one by Brahms vies with it in seriousness. The richest, the most seductive, was written by Max Bruch. But the most inward, the heart's jewel, is Mendelssohn's.
Joseph Joachim
#2. I once painted a concert singer and on the chestnut frame I carved the opening bars of Mendelssohn's Rest in the Lord. It was ornamental unobtrusive and to musicians I think it emphasized the expression of the face and pose of the figure.
Thomas Eakins
#3. These seem to me so ambiguous, so vague, so easily misunderstood in comparison to genuine music, which fills the soul with a thousand things better than words.
Felix Mendelssohn
#4. When the student has her voice under complete control, it is safe to take up the lyric repertoire of Mendelssohn, Old English Songs, etc. How simple and charming they are!
Alma Gluck
#5. My religion recognizes no obligation to resolve doubt other than through rational means; and it commands no mere faith in eternal truths
Moses Mendelssohn
#7. According to Miller, Pharisee Judaism is not a religion at all, but a secret society posing as a religion, a "sect with Judaism as a rite." She cites Moses Mendelssohn who wrote "Judaism is not a religion but a Law religionized."
Edith Starr Miller
#8. I fear that, in the end, the famous debate among materialists, idealists, and dualists amounts to a merely verbal dispute that is more a matter for the linguist than for the speculative philosopher.
Moses Mendelssohn
#9. The years 1781 to 1793 are crucial for many reasons, but chiefly because they pose in an especially clear way the main problem of German philosophy for the next century. This is the old conflict between reason and faith which recurred during the pantheism controversy between Jacobi and Mendelssohn.
Frederick C. Beiser
#10. Pray to God that He might create is us a clean heart and renew a right spirit within us.
Felix Mendelssohn
#12. And do you agree with me, that the first condition of an artist should be to bear respect toward what is great, and to bow to it and acknowledge it and not attempt to extinguish great flames for the sake of making his own rushlight burn more brightly?
Felix Mendelssohn
#13. I know perfectly well that no musician can make his thoughts or his talents different to what Heaven has made them; but I also know that if Heaven had given him good ones, he must also be able to develop them properly.
Felix Mendelssohn
#15. The principal axiom in their theory was: Everything can be proved, and everything can be disproved; and in the process, one must profit as much from the folly of others, and from his own superiority, as he can.
Moses Mendelssohn
#16. Mendelssohn I consider the first musician of the day; I doff my hat to him as my superior. He plays with everything, especially with the grouping of the instruments in the orchestra, but with such ease, delicacy and art, with such mastery throughout.
Robert Schumann
#17. Garris had pet names for all of them. Mahler was the Mad Doktor. Franz Liszt was Son of Lovecraft. Mendelssohn was Santa Claus Meets the Hell's Angels. Beethoven was the High School Principal.
Chet Williamson
#18. Such a divine profession is art! When everything else looks so stale and disgustingly vacuous, so enthralls even the littlest real effort of art our innermost and carries us from town, from country, from earth, as that it must be truely a blessing of the Gods.
Felix Mendelssohn
#19. The analysis of concepts is for the understanding nothing more than what the magnifying glass is for sight.
Moses Mendelssohn
#20. Never mind, put any book on the piano, and someone can turn from time to time, so I need not look as though I played by heart.
Felix Mendelssohn
#21. The state has physical power and uses it when necessary; the power of religion is love and beneficence.
Moses Mendelssohn
#22. Even if, in one or other of them, I had a particular word or words in mind, I would not tell anyone, because the same word means different things to different people. Only the songs say the same thing, arouse the same feeling, in everyone - a feeling that can't be expressed in words.
Felix Mendelssohn
#23. There's a million people who can go out and play the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto brilliantly, but we're the only ones who can do 'A Little Nightmare Music.'
Aleksey Igudesman
#24. Consciousness of myself, combined with complete ignorance of everything that does not fall within my sphere of thinking, is the most telling proof of my substantiality outside God, of my original existence.
Moses Mendelssohn
#25. Judaism boasts of no exclusive revelation of eternal truths that are indispensable to salvation, of no revealed religion in the sense in which that term is usually understood.
Moses Mendelssohn
#26. Ever since I began to compose, I have remained true to my starting principle: not to write a page because no matter what public, or what pretty girl wanted it to be thus or thus; but to write solely as I myself thought best, and as it gave me pleasure.
Felix Mendelssohn
#27. Socrates' fame spread all over Greece, and the most respected and educated men from all around came to him, in order to enjoy his friendly company and instruction.
Moses Mendelssohn
#29. Einstein Freud Marx Proust Mahler Mendelssohn Chagall & don't forget Dr. Jonas Salk ... & still they hate us!
Sonia Taitz
#30. For a game it is too serious, for seriousness too much of a game.
Moses Mendelssohn
#31. If you go to Japan for instance, you should know that they have a different way of playing Beethoven or Brahms. But if you play with them Mozart, Debussy, Mendelssohn, they have a wonderful light feeling for that.
Kurt Masur
#32. Socrates didn't care to visit the theater, as a rule, except when the plays of Euripides (which some think, he himself had helped to compose), were performed.
Moses Mendelssohn
#33. It's not that music is too imprecise for words, but too precise ...
Felix Mendelssohn
#34. We would be able neither to remember nor to reflect nor to compare nor to think, indeed, we would not even be the person who we were a moment ago, if our concepts were divided among many and were not to be encountered somewhere together in their most exact combination.
Moses Mendelssohn
#37. Revealed religion is one thing, revealed legislation, another.
Moses Mendelssohn
#38. You know how much I am inclined to explain all disputes among philosophical schools as merely verbal disputes or at least to derive them originally from verbal disputes.
Moses Mendelssohn
#39. People often complain that music is too ambiguous, that what they should think when they hear it is so unclear, whereas everyone understands words. With me, it is exactly the opposite, and not only with regard to an entire speech but also with individual words.
Felix Mendelssohn
#40. Reader! To whatever visible church, synagogue, or mosque you may belong! See if you do not find more true religion among the host of the excommunicated than among the far greater host who excommunicated them.
Moses Mendelssohn
#41. It must be a sign of talent that I do not give up, though I can get nobody to take an interest in my efforts.
Fanny Mendelssohn
#42. I'm in a position where, theoretically, I could play the same ten concertos and make a very good living bouncing around playing Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky and Barber, but I really think artists should keep pushing limits and trying new things.
Joshua Bell
#44. The state dictates and coerces; religion teaches and persuades. The state enacts laws; religion gives commandments. The state is armed with physical force and makes use of it if need be; the force of religion is love and benevolence.
Moses Mendelssohn
#45. Though everything else may appear shallow and repulsive, even the smallest task in music is so absorbing, and carries us so far away from town, country, earth, and all worldly things, that it is truly a blessed gift of God.
Felix Mendelssohn
#46. The detectives slide back on the digital timeline to the moment when Mendelssohn steps out into the snowstorm: there is something of the Greek epic about it, the old gray man with his walking stick, venturing out, into the snow, out of frame and away, like an ancient word stepping off a page.
Colum McCann
#47. But dogmatism - or the inclination "to identify the goal of our thinking with the point at which we have become tired of thinking" - is so natural to man that it is not likely to be a preserve of the past. [Citing Lessing's January 9, 1771 letter to Mendelssohn.]
Leo Strauss
#48. Instead, it appears to be a particular mark of beauty that it is considered with tranquil satisfaction; that it pleases if we also do not possess it and we are still far removed from demanding to possess it.
Moses Mendelssohn
#50. Mendelssohn never wrote any Water Music. However, he wrote the Scotch Symphony, which is even better, or at least stronger.
Victor Borge
#51. This is what I think art is and what I demand of it: that it pull everyone in, that it show one person another's most intimate thoughts and feelings, that it throw open the window of the soul.
Felix Mendelssohn
#52. That was one of the big problems when I was at Harvard studying music. We had to write choral pieces in the style of Brahms or Mendelssohn, which was distressing because in the end you realized how good Brahms is, and how bad you are.
Elliott Carter
#53. Dewar's rule in his laboratory was as absolute as that of a Pharaoh, and he showed deference to no one except the ghost of Faraday whom he met occasionally all night in the gallery behind the lecture room.
Kurt Mendelssohn
#54. If nobody ever offers an opinion or takes the slightest interest in one's production, one loses not only all pleasure in them, but all power of judging their value.
Fanny Mendelssohn
#55. Both state and church have as their object actions as well as convictions, the former insofar as they are based on the relations between man and nature, the latter insofar as they are based on the relations between nature and God.
Moses Mendelssohn
#56. I dislike nothing more than finding fault with a man's nature or talent; it only depresses and worries and does no good; one cannot add a cubit to one's stature, all striving and struggling are useless there, so one has to be silent about it, and let the responsibility rest with God.
Felix Mendelssohn
#57. When Socrates was about 30, and his father was long dead, he was still pursuing the art of sculpture, but from necessity, and without much inclination.
Moses Mendelssohn
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