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To write a symphony is, for me, to construct a world.

Gustav Mahler

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Gustav Mahler
Age: 50 †
Born: 1860
Born: July 7
Died: 1911
Died: May 18
Classical Composer
Composer
Conductor
Musician
Mahler
Symphony
Write
Writing
World
Construct
Constructs

More quotes by Gustav Mahler

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I beg of you... never assume an inner or an outer pose, never a disguise.
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It should be one’s sole endeavor to see everything afresh and create it anew.
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Tradition is laziness.
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Melodic invention is one of the surest signs of a divine gift.
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In the theatrical works we love and admire the most, the ending of the drama generally takes place offstage.
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It is always the same with me only when I experience something do I compose, and only when composing do I experience! After all, a musician's nature can hardly be expressed in words.
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I don't let myself get carried away by my own ideas I abandon 19 out of 20 of them every day.
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The further the music develops, the more complex the apparatus used by the composer to express his thoughts becomes.
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I was a crazy young man who let himself be blinded by his passions and obeyed only the impulses of the moment.
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In Bach, the vital cells of music are united as the world is in God.
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Both my marriages were failures! Number one departed, and number two stayed
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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.
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I don't choose what I compose. It chooses me.
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But it's peculiar, as soon as I am in the midst of nature and by myself, everything that is base and trivial vanishes without trace. On such days nothing scares me and this helps me again and again.
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A full cup of wine at the right time is worth more than all the kingdoms of this earth!
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I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.
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In its beginnings, music was merely chamber music, meant to be listened to in a small space by a small audience.
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Behind me the branches of a wasted and sterile existence are cracking.
Gustav Mahler
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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.
Gustav Mahler
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Even if people censure me, they should do so hat in hand.
Gustav Mahler