Richard Wagner Quotes

Music is the inarticulate speech of the heart, which cannot be compressed into words, because it is infinite.

I regard the Jewish race as the born enemy of pure humanity and everything that is noble in it.

The purpose of art: to make the unconscious conscious.

Joy is not in things; it is in us.

Imagination creates reality.

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

It is necessary for us to explain the involuntary repugnance we possess for the nature and personality of the Jews. The Jews have never produced a true poet. Heinrich Heine reached the point where he duped himself into a poet, and was rewarded by his versified lies being set to music by our own composers. He was the conscience of Judaism, just as Judaism is the evil conscience of our modern civilization.

I believe in God, Mozart and Beethoven, and likewise their disciples and apostles; - I believe in the Holy Spirit and the truth of the one, indivisible Art; - I believe that this Art proceeds from God, and lives within the hearts of all illumined men.

The language of tones belongs equally to all mankind, and melody is the absolute language in which the musician speaks to every heart.

Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them.

The oldest, truest, most beautiful organ of music, the origin to which alone our music owes its being, is the human voice.

The only form of music is melody, without melody music is not feasible, and music and melody are quite inseparable.

It is a truth forever, that where the speech of man stops short there Music's reign begins.

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.

I know absolutely nothing about music.

My destiny is solitude, and my life is work.

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.

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.

A political man is disgusting, but a political wife, horrible.

...music is the living God in our bosoms.

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.

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.

I write music with an exclamation point!

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.

Whatever I thought right, to others seemed wrong; what I held to be bad, others approved of.