Top 100 Quotes About Chopin
#1. And you have eyes the colour of beech leaves in October. Yet no one is ever allowed to look into them.
Kate Chopin
#2. Talking to Lee Child and discovering, from his chapter in The Chopin Manuscript, that he's even more of an audio geek than I am (as his chapter in Chopin proves).
David Hewson
#3. He reproached his wife with her inattention, her habitual neglect of the children. If it was not a mother's place to look after children, whose on earth was it? He himself had his hands full with his brokerage business.
Kate Chopin
#4. Mrs. Pontellier gave over being astonished, and concluded that wonders would never cease.
Kate Chopin
#5. What shall we do there?" "Climb up the hill to the old fort and look at the little wriggling gold snakes, and watch the lizards sun themselves.
Kate Chopin
#6. She felt like a chess player who, by the clever handling of his pieces, sees the game taking the course intended. Her eyes were bright and tender with a smile as they glanced up into his; and her lips looked hungry for the kiss which they invited.
Kate Chopin
#7. Some people are born with a vital and responsive energy. It not only enables them to keep abreast of the times; it qualifies them to furnish in their own personality a good bit of the motive power to the mad pace.
Kate Chopin
#8. She felt moved to read the book in secret and solitude, though none of the others had done so, - to hide it from view at the sound of approaching footsteps.
Kate Chopin
#9. The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.
Kate Chopin
#10. I loved Debussy, Stravinsky, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, anything with romantic melodies, especially the nocturnes. Nietzsche was a hero, especially with 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra.' He gets a bad rap; he's very misunderstood. He's a maker of individuals, and he was a teacher of teachers.
Joni Mitchell
#11. Sometimes I feel this summer as if I were walking through the green meadow again, idly, aimlessly, unthinking and unguided.
Kate Chopin
#12. Concerts are never real music, you have to give up the idea of hearing in them all the most beautiful things of art.
Frederic Chopin
#13. If the newspapers cut me up so much that I shall not venture before the world again, I have resolved to become a house painter; that would be as easy as anything else, and I should, at any rate, still be an artist!
Frederic Chopin
#14. There are periods of despondency and suffering which take possession of me. But I don't want anything but my own way. That is wanting a good deal, of course, when you have to trample upon the lives, the hearts, the prejudices of others-
Kate Chopin
#15. Her marriage to Leonce Pontellier was purely an accident, in this respect resembling many other marriages which masquerade as the decrees of Fate.
Kate Chopin
#16. The peace and beauty of a spring day had descended upon the earth like a benediction.
Kate Chopin
#17. The lovers were just entering the grounds of the pension. They were leaning toward each other as the water oaks bent from the sea. There was not a particle of earth beneath their feet. Their heads might have been turned upside down, so absolutely did they tread upon blue ether.
Kate Chopin
#18. He greatly valued his possessions, chiefly because they were his, and derived genuine pleasure from contemplating a painting, a statuette, a rare lace curtain - no matter what - after he had bought it and placed it among his household gods.
Kate Chopin
#19. Man is never always happy, and very often only a brief period of happiness is granted him in this world; so why escape from this dream which cannot last long?
Frederic Chopin
#20. The children appeared before her like antagonists who had overcome her; who had overpowered and sought to drag her into the soul's slavery for the rest of her days.
Kate Chopin
#21. The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was willing to heed. The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone was significant.
Kate Chopin
#22. There was something in her attitude, in her whole appearance when she leaned her head against the high-backed chair and spread her arms, which suggested the regal woman, the one who rules, who looks on, who stands alone.
Kate Chopin
#23. Having nothing to do, I am correcting the Paris edition of Bach; not only the engraver's mistakes, but also the mistakes hallowed by those who are supposed to understand Bach (I have no pretensions to understand better, but I do think that sometimes I can guess).
Frederic Chopin
#24. By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilishly wicked specimen of the sex.
Kate Chopin
#26. To be a great composer requires immense experience ... One acquires this by listening not only to other men's work, but above all to one's own!
Frederic Chopin
#27. My piano has not yet arrived. How did you send it? By Marseilles or by Perpignan? I dream music but I cannot make any because here there are not any pianos ... in this respect this is a savage country.
Frederic Chopin
#28. Edna had once told Madame Ratignolle that she would never sacrifice herself for her children; or for anyone.
I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself.
Kate Chopin
#29. There are some people who leave impressions not so lasting as the imprint of an oar upon the water.
Kate Chopin
#30. I used to get into the government car and switch on Chopin or someone I liked to hear at the end of a parliamentary day.
Joan Kirner
#32. But there was escape, too, even in those days, for there was Whistler living in the grey mists with a faded orange moon. The nocturne transformed itself into dreamy rooms with Chopin's music creating a mood that softened the hard core of self.
Mark Tobey
#34. I don't mind walking. I always feel so sorry for women who don't like to walk; they miss so much
so many rare little glimpses of life; and we women learn so little of life on the whole.
Kate Chopin
#35. I hope you won't completely forget me.
Kate Chopin
#36. I trust it will not be giving away professional secrets to say that many readers would be surprised, perhaps shocked, at the questions which some newspaper editors will put to a defenseless woman under the guise of flattery.
Kate Chopin
#37. Trying to capture the physicists' precise mathematical description of the quantum world with our crude words and mental images is like playing Chopin with a boxing glove on one hand and a catcher's mitt on the other.
George Johnson
#38. The earth is suffocating ... Swear to make them cut me open, so that I won't be buried alive.
Frederic Chopin
#39. So, having dried my tear-swollen eyelids, I take up my pen to inquire of you, are you alive or did you die? If you are dead, please let me know, and I will tell the cook, for ever since she heard about it she has been saying her prayers.
Frederic Chopin
#40. Just as surely as every new language mastered opens up a new world, so knowledge of a Beethoven, a Chopin, or a Schumann opens up a new world in spiritual beauty and thought.
Ignacy Jan Paderewski
#41. So does he live, seeking, finding, joying and suffering.
Kate Chopin
#42. Hats off, gentlemen - a genius! If the mighty autocrat of the north knew what a dangerous enemy threatened him in Chopin's works in the simple tunes of his mazurkas, he would forbid this music. Chopin's works are canons buried in flowers.
Frederic Chopin
#43. You [Chopin] have in your fingers an orchestra of butterflies.
Adam Mickiewicz
#44. Nostalgia, more than anything, gives us the shudder of our own imperfection. This is why with Chopin we feel so little like gods.
Emil Cioran
#45. When one does a thing, it appears good, otherwise one would not write it. Only later comes reflection, and one discards or accepts the thing. Time is the best censor, and patience a most excellent teacher.
Frederic Chopin
#46. She liked then to wander alone into strange and unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashioned to dream in.
Kate Chopin
#47. Oh, how hard it must be to die anywhere but in one's birthplace.
Frederic Chopin
#48. I don't know where there can be so many pianists as in Paris, so many asses and so many virtuosi.
Frederic Chopin
#49. It's important to play the pieces that you feel you can play well. It was always my dream to play Bach - my first love and fascination - Chopin, and Szymanowski.
Rafal Blechacz
#50. The Ratignolles understood each other perfectly. If ever the fusion of two human beings into one has been accomplished on this sphere it was surely in their union.
Kate Chopin
#51. I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness, and yet I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them.
Frederic Chopin
#52. Par exemple! I never had to ask. You were always there under my feet, like a troublesome cat." "You mean like an adoring dog. And just as soon as Ratignolle appeared on the scene, then it WAS like a dog. 'Passez! Adieu! Allez vous-en!
Kate Chopin
#53. There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature.
Kate Chopin
#54. The artist must possess the courageous soul that dares and defies
Kate Chopin
#55. I really don't know whether any place contains more pianists than Paris, or whether you can find more asses and virtuosos anywhere.
Frederic Chopin
#56. I tell you a secret about Chopin, piano is his best friend. More. He tells piano all his secrets." - piano teacher Eleanora Sivan.
Anna Goldsworthy
#57. Who can tell what metals the gods use in forging the subtle bond which we call sympathy, which we might as well call love.
Kate Chopin
#58. England is so surrounded by the boredom of conventionalities, that it is all one to them whether music is good or bad, since they have to hear it from morning till night. For here they have flower-shows with music, dinners with music, sales with music ...
Frederic Chopin
#59. Don't stir all the warmth out of your coffee; drink it.
Kate Chopin
#60. It was going to be a beautiful morning, I remember thinking, as I left the house; soft and close, bursting with whispered promises, as only a daybreak in early summer can be.
Kate Chopin
#61. Has she," asked the Doctor, with a smile, "has she been associating of late with a circle of pseudo-intellectual women - super-spiritual superior beings? My wife has been telling me about them.
Kate Chopin
#62. My mother was a very talented pianist, and she was a music teacher who hated to teach music, actually, but she loved to play, so I was brought up with Chopin, Debussy and Mozart.
Peter C. Doherty
#63. It would have been a difficult matter for Mr. Pontellier to define to his own satisfaction or any one else's wherein his wife failed in her duty toward their children. It was something which he felt rather than perceived, and he never voiced the feeling without subsequent regret and ample atonement.
Kate Chopin
#64. When Doctor Mandelet dined with the Pontelliers on Thursday he could discern in Mrs. Pontellier no trace of that morbid condition which her husband had reported to him. She was excited and in a manner radiant.
Kate Chopin
#65. To be an artist includes much; one must possess many gifts - absolute gifts - which have not been acquired by one's own effort. And, moreover, to succeed, the artist much possess the courageous soul.
Kate Chopin
#66. Descendants of pigeons once fed by Keats, Byron, George Sand, Chopin and many other famous lovers are still being fed, and the sudden sound when they all rise together, frightened away, is like the sound of giant sails flapping.
Anais Nin
#67. Yesterday's concert was a success. I hasten to let you know. I inform your Lordship that I was not a bit nervous and played as I play when I am alone. It went well ... and I had to come back and bow four times.
Frederic Chopin
#68. The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, and The Optimist's Daughter, by Eudora Welty.
Cheryl Strayed
#69. I used to play the piano by listening to it - like Chopin pieces, when I was, like, a little kid - and then the minute my parents got me lessons to read music, I couldn't do it anymore.
Eliza Coupe
#70. The Official Bulletin declared that the Poles should be as proud of me as the Germans are of Mozart; obvious nonsense.
Frederic Chopin
#71. Sometimes I think, not so much am I a pianist, but a vampire. All my life I have lived off the blood of Chopin.
Arthur Rubinstein
#72. All the same it is being said everywhere that I played too softly, or rather, too delicately for people used to the piano-pounding of the artists here.
Frederic Chopin
#73. There was a dull pang of regret because it was not the kiss of love which had inflamed her, because it was not love which had held this cup of life to her lips.
Kate Chopin
#74. The Doctor ... told the old ever-new and curious story of the waning of a woman's love, seeking strange, new channels, only to return to its legitimate source after days of fierce unrest.
Kate Chopin
#75. Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life.
Kate Chopin
#76. Ruth puts in all the tiddley bits and the expression and doesn't mind how many wrong notes she strikes, but with Jane it is accuracy or nothing. I don't know which Chopin would have hated more, Eleanor said, folding bread and butter into a thickness that would match her appetite.
Josephine Tey
#77. Edna looked straight before her with a self-absorbed expression upon her face. She felt no interest in anything about her. The street, the children, the fruit vender, the flowers growing there under her eyes, were all part and parcel of an alien world which had suddenly become antagonistic.
Kate Chopin
#78. Daisies, just starting to close their petals, littered the grass like fallen stars.
Kate Chopin
#79. Vienna is a handsome, lively city, and pleases me exceedingly.
Frederic Chopin
#80. Something flickered in the distance, dressing the darkness in a soft veil of blue. Out of the blue came an explosion of sounds followed by the seamlessly expressed melancholy of Chopin's "Ballade no. 1.
Ella Leya
#81. Discover her appetite, and to see the relish with which she ate the
Kate Chopin
#82. The stillest hour of the night had come, the hour before dawn, when the world seems to hold its breath. The moon hung low, and had turned from silver to copper in the sleeping sky.
Kate Chopin
#83. I have owned and played a Steinway all my life. It's the best Beethoven piano. The best Chopin piano. And the best Ray Charles piano. I like it, too.
Randy Newman
#84. I really don't think I have that much of the gift; I have a little bit, but I wish I were Schubert or Chopin or Beethoven, though Beethoven had a very difficult time writing melody, too.
Gian Carlo Menotti
#85. My mother Elizabeth Ivey Brubeck was a pianist who studied with Dame Myra Hess and Tobias Matthey. As a child in California I used to listen to her play Chopin.
Dave Brubeck
#87. She reminded him of some beautiful, sleek animal waking up in the sun.
Kate Chopin
#88. The cause of freedom, in music as elsewhere, is now very nearly triumphant; but at a time when its adversaries were many and powerful, we can hardly imagine the sacred bridge of liberty kept by a more stalwart trio than Schubert the Armorer, Chopin the Refiner, and Liszt the Thunderer.
Hugh Reginald Haweis
#89. I am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier's possessions to dispose of or not.
Kate Chopin
#90. Every step which she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual.
Kate Chopin
#91. You can't go home and listen to Chopin, and just use it.
Mick Farren
#92. I have met a great celebrity, Madame Dudevant, known as George Sand ... Her appearance is not to my liking. Indeed there is something about her which positively repels me ... What an unattractive person La Sand is ... Is she really a woman? I'm inclined to doubt it.
Frederic Chopin
#93. Youth is given up to illusions. It seems to be a provision of Nature; a decoy to secure mothers for the race. And Nature takes no account of moral consequences, of arbitrary conditions which we create, and which we feel obliged to maintain at any cost.
Kate Chopin
#94. She was just having a good cry all to herself.
Kate Chopin
#95. I don't want to part in any ill-humor. But can't you understand? I've grown used to seeing you, to having you with me all the time, and your action seems unfriendly, even unkind. You don't even offer an excuse for it. Why, I was planning to be together.
Kate Chopin
#96. I've been working like a machine, and feeling like a lost soul.
Kate Chopin
#97. I have said it before, but I don't think I have ever came so near meaning it.
Kate Chopin
#98. It is dreadful when something weighs on your mind, not to have a soul to unburden yourself to. You know what I mean. I tell my piano the things I used to tell you.
Frederic Chopin
#99. She says queer things sometimes in a bantering way that you don't notice at the time and you find yourself thinking about afterward.
Kate Chopin
#100. I feel like a novice, just as I felt before I knew anything of the keyboard. It is far too original, and I shall end up not being able to learn it myself.
Frederic Chopin
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