Gustav Mahler's Quotes

I don't let myself get carried away by my own ideas - I abandon 19 out of 20 of them every day.

If I weren't the way I am, I shouldn't write my symphonies.

It is easier to achieve a desired result in short pieces.

It should be one's sole endeavor to see everything afresh and create it anew.

Melodic invention is one of the surest signs of a divine gift.

Never let oneself be guided by the opinion of one's contemporaries. Continue steadfastly on one's way.

Spring won't let me stay in this house any longer! I must get out and breathe the air deeply again.

The further the music develops, the more complex the apparatus used by the composer to express his thoughts becomes.

The impressions of the spriritual experiences gave my future life its form and content.

The spirit can assert itself only through the medium of clear form.

There is a world of difference between a Mahler eighth note and a normal eighth note.

To judge a composer's work, one must consider it as a whole.

What I wanted and what I visualized while composing has not always been realized.

When I have reached a summit, I leave it with great reluctance, unless it is to reach for another, higher one.

With the coming of spring, I am calm again.

You must renounce all superficiality, all convention, all vanity and delusion.

I also had a brother who was like me a musician and a composer. A man of great talent, far more gifted than I. He died very young... he killed himself in the prime of his life.

The longer you live and the more you learn, the more clearly you will feel the difference between the few men who are truly great and the mere virtuosi.

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.

Don't bother looking at the view - I have already composed it.

The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star but to go one's way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause.

Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested. So let us not be idle.

A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.