I did not compose my work as one might put on a church vestment... rather it sprung from the truly fervent faith of my heart, such as I have felt it since my childhood.

As the mother teaches her children how to express themselves in their language, so one Gypsy musician teaches the other. They have never shown any need for notation.

It is impossible to imagine a more complete fusion with nature than that of the Gypsy.

I find little in the works of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and others when they are led by a conductor who functions like a windmill.

Beware of missing chances; otherwise it may be altogether too late some day.

Brahms' Variations are better than mine, but mine were written before his.

The public is always good.

Truth is a great flirt.

Supreme serenity still remains the Ideal of great Art. The shapes and transitory forms of life are but stages toward this Ideal, which Christ's religion illuminates with His divine light.

The character of instrumental music... lets the emotions radiate and shine in their own character without presuming to display them as real or imaginary representations.

In Hungary all native music, in its origin, is divided naturally into melody destined for song or melody for the dance.

Without any assistance whatever, I founded a school in Weimar in 10 years. Only I could perform certain works with the scanty means that I dared not ask anyone else to work with.

Real men are sadly lacking in this world, for when they are put to the test they prove worthless.

I conclude that the Wagnerian operas which are already in the repertoire, and other masterworks as well, stand in no further need of my services.

Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist.

A person of any mental quality has ideas of his own. This is common sense.

Life is only a long and bitter suicide, and faith alone can transform this suicide into a sacrifice.

We need improvement in the style of performance. There is no more advantage in a musician who plays and conducts than in one who is only a beater of rhythm.

It is my fervent wish and my greatest ambition to leave a work with a few useful instructions for the pianists after me.

Sorrowful and great is the artist's destiny.

I did not compose my work as one might put on a church vestment... rather it sprung from the truly fervent faith of my heart, such as I have felt it since my childhood.

I foster a sorrowful conception of affection. Make no sacrifices.

Inspiration is enough to give expression to the tone in singing, especially when the song is without words.

Broad paths are open to every endeavour, and a sympathetic recognition is assured to every one who consecrates his art to the divine services of a conviction of a consciousness.

The music of the Gypsies belongs in the sphere of improvisation rather than in any other, without which it would have no power to exist.

Companions, in misery and worse, that is what we all are, and to try to change this substantially avails us nothing.

A theatre receives recognition through its initiative, which is indispensable for first-rate performances.

Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought, as it is forced in most arts and especially in the art of words.

The principal task of a conductor is not to put himself in evidence but to disappear behind his functions as much as possible. We are pilots, not servants.

Beware of missing chances otherwise it may be altogether too late some day.

Companions in misery and worse that is what we all are and to try to change this substantially avails us nothing.

You cannot imagine how it spoils one to have been a child prodigy.

A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost.

A lot of people have gotten into comedy because of certain influences in their lives or events that were painful, and I really have wracked my brain to figure it out. I pretty much have had a normal childhood. Maybe it was too normal.

It sounds ideal, a sort of beach childhood. But it wasn't really. I didn't use the beach very much at all.

All our pursuits, from childhood to manhood, are only trifles of different sorts and sizes, proportioned to our years and views.

The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything worth doing is worth doing well.

I don't carry any early childhood trauma around with me, if that's what you're hinting at. The story of the bicycles - and there were three of them which were stolen from me - I've dealt with it well.

Remember Graham Green's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think that all writers feel alienated. Most of us go back to an alienated childhood in some way or another. I know that I do.

Hors d'oeuvres have always a pathetic interest for me; they remind me of one's childhood that one goes through wondering what the next course is going to be like - and during the rest of the menu one wishes one had eaten more of the hors d'oeuvres.

Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.

Everything I write comes from my childhood in one way or another. I am forever drawing on the sense of mystery and wonder and possibility that pervaded that time of my life.

Well I was an asthmatic child. So that for most of my childhood I was in bed. Bedridden.

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

I think actors always retain one foot in the cradle. We're switched on to our youth, to our childhood. We have to be because we're in the business of transferring emotions to other people.

If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.

I had a kind of Dickensian childhood.

Friendships in childhood are usually a matter of chance, whereas in adolescence they are most often a matter of choice.

I didn't have a happy childhood.