Quotes by Richard Wagner

“Joy is not in things; it is in us”

“Imagination creates reality.”

“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; - I believe that he who once has bathed in the sublime delights of this high Art, is consecrate to Her for ever, and never can deny Her; - I believe that through Art all men are saved.”

“Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them.”

“I write music with an exclamation point!”

“One supreme fact which I have discovered is that it is not willpower, but fantasy-imagination that creates. Imagination is the creative force. Imagination creates reality.”

“After Rossini dies, who will there be to promote his music?”

“I am fond of them, of the inferior beings of the abyss, of those who are full of longing.”

“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 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”

“Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.”

“Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.”

“True Drama is only conceivable as proceeding from a common urgency of every art towards the most direct appeal to a common public. In this Drama, each separate art can only bare its utmost secret to their common public through a mutual parleying with the other arts; for the purpose of each separate branch of art can only be fully attained by the reciprocal agreement and co-operation of all the branches in their common message.”

“Freshly blows the wind homewards: my Irish child, where are you dwelling?”

“Even if I know I shall never change the masses, never transform anything permanent, all I ask is that the good things also have their place, their refuge.”

“Achievements, seldom credited to their source, are the result of unspeakable drudgery and worries”

“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.”

“I wish I could score everything for horns.”

“Whatever my passions demand of me, I become for the time being - musician, poet, director, author, lecturer or anything else.”

“Richard Wagner, a musician who wrote music which is better than it sounds.”