The ultimate necessity is the summoning of the mind and will to do their duty.
Times change, people change, thought and feeling take new shapes, put on fresh garments, sons bow their heads unwillingly to that which enraptured their fathers.
The genius is the man who has genuine and deep human relations with others, who does not cut himself off in the search for originality, but who realizes the value of artistic tradition.
Art is great only when it bears the stamp of the individual.
Art must be a slow and normal evolution.
Art without technique is invertebrate, shapeless, characterless.
The great familiar musical works are always greeted by the audiences as ever welcome and beloved friends.
If I don't practise for one day, I know it; if I don't practise for two days, the critics knows it; if I don't practise for three days, the audience knows it.
Musical expression is never primarily national, but is personal and individual rather. It is so deep, so profound, that it goes beyond and below nationality and gives voice to the most private feeling. In music there is never exact heredity. Each man is an individual.
A man is not necessarily a master because he happened to compose two or three centuries ago. Let us beware of the worship of mere antiquity.
The mere fact of knowing that a great audience waits on your labor is enough to shake all your nerves to pieces.
When I miss a week in practice, my audience knows it. When I miss a day, I know it.
I am inclined to believe that some music, like certain poetry, finds its appeal and way to all.
I loved your country [America] before I knew it.
Change follows change in us, almost without transition; we pass from blissful rapture to sobbing woe; a single step divides our sublimest ecstasies from the darkest depth of spiritual despondency.
It is not from choice that my life is music and nothing more, but when one is an artist what else can he be? When a whole lifetime is too short to attain the heights he wants to reach, how then can he devote any of the little time he has to things outside of his art?
I established a certain standard of behavior, that, during my playing, there must be no talking.
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.
Intellectual isolation always follows commercial isolation.
Beginnings play their prized part in every finished human accomplishment, for beginnings mean the birth of added progress.
There have been a few moments when I have known complete satisfaction, but only a few. I have rarely been free from the disturbing realization that my playing might have been better.
