Quotes by "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart"

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

I write as a sow piddles.

Stay with me to-night; you must see me die. I have long had the taste of death on my tongue, I smell death, and who will stand by my Constanze, if you do not stay?

As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relationships with this best and truest friend of mankind that death's image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling.

When I am traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that ideas flow best and most abundantly.

I live in a country where music has very little success, though, exclusive of those who have forsaken us, we have still admirable professors and, more particularly, composers of great solidity, knowledge, and taste.

As for pupils, I can have as many as I choose, but I do not choose to take many. I intend to be better paid than others, and so I wish to have fewer scholars. It is advisable to hang back a little at first, or it is all over with you, and you must pursue the common highway with the rest.

I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.

One must not make oneself cheap here - that is a cardinal point - or else one is done. Whoever is most impertinent has the best chance.

Nevertheless the passions, whether violent or not, should never be so expressed as to reach the point of causing disgust; and music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music.

It is a great consolation for me to remember that the Lord, to whom I had drawn near in humble and child-like faith, has suffered and died for me, and that He will look on me in love and compassion.

The happy medium - truth in all things - is no longer either known or valued; to gain applause, one must write things so inane that they might be played on barrel-organs, or so unintelligible that no rational being can comprehend them, though on that very account, they are likely to please.

My Constanze is the virtuous, honourable, discreet, and faithful darling of her honest and kindly-disposed Mozart.

Just as people behave to me, so do I behave to them. When I see that a person despises me and treats me with contempt, I can be as proud as any peacock.

We live in this world in order always to learn industriously and to enlighten each other by means of discussion and to strive vigorously to promote the progress of science and the fine arts.

I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.

When I come to reflect on the subject, in no country have I received such honors or been so esteemed as in Italy, and nothing contributes more to a man's fame than to have written Italian operas, and especially for Naples.

How sad it is that these great gentlemen should believe what anyone tells them and do not choose to judge for themselves! But it is always so.

Believe me, I do not like idleness but work.

Versification is, indeed, indispensable for music, but rhyme, solely for rhyming's sake, most pernicious.