Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Richard Wagner, fully Wilhelm Richard Wagner

German Composer, Conductor, Theatre Director and Polemicist known for his Operas

"Joy is not in things; it is in us."

"A political man is disgusting, but a political wife, horrible."

"Achievements, seldom credited to their source, are the result of unspeakable drudgery and worries."

"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."

"Divorce is one of the most financially traumatic things you can go through. Money spent on getting mad or getting even is money wasted."

"From its first faint glimmerings, History shows Man's constant progress as a beast of prey. As such he conquers every land, subdues the fruit-fed races, founds mighty realms by subjugating other subjugators, forms states and sets up civilizations, to enjoy his prey at rest."

"Attack and defense, want and war, victory and defeat, lordship and thraldom, all sealed with the seal of blood: this from henceforth is the History of Man."

"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."

"Germany appeared in my eyes a very tiny portion of the earth. I had emerged from abstract Mysticism, and I learnt a love for Matter. Beauty of material and brilliancy of wit were lordly things to me: as regards my beloved music, I found them both among the Frenchmen and Italians. I forswore my model, Beethoven; his last Symphony I deemed the keystone of a whole great epoch of art, beyond whose limits no man could hope to press, and within which no man could attain to independence."

"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 forever, and never can deny Her; - I believe that through Art all men are saved."

"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."

"I write music with an exclamation point!"

"If you have a better defensive system, the attacker has to work that much harder, recruit more people, put on more shielding, ... The bigger the operation gets, the better chance our people have of detecting and stopping it."

"Imagination creates reality."

"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."

"Little steps are being taken that may be in the right direction... It's the rate of progress I'm concerned about."

"Music has taken a bad turn; these young people have no idea how to write a melody, they just give us shavings, which they dress up to look like a lion's mane and shake at us... It's as if they avoid melodies, for fear of having perhaps stolen them from someone else."

"The aim of Opera has ever been, and still is today, confined to Music. Merely so as to afford Music with a colorable pretext for her own excursions, is the purpose of Drama dragged on -- naturally, not to curtail the ends of Music, but rather to serve her simply as a means."

"Property has acquired an almost greater sacredness in our social conscience than religion: for offence against the latter there is lenience, for damage to the former no forgiveness. Since Property is deemed the base of all stability, the more's the pity that not all are owners, that in fact the greater proportion of Society comes disinherited into the world. Society is manifestly thus reduced by its own principle to such a perilous inquietude, that it is compelled to reckon all its laws for an impossible adjustment of this conflict; and protection of property "

"The error in the art-genre of Opera consists herein: a Means of expression (Music) has been made the end, while the End of expression (the Drama) has been made a means."

"The oldest, truest, most beautiful organ of music, the origin to which alone our music owes its being, is the human voice."

"The July Revolution took place; with one bound I became a revolutionist, and acquired the conviction that every decently active being ought to occupy himself with politics exclusively. I was only happy in the company of political writers, and I commenced an Overture upon a political theme. Thus was I minded, when I left school and went to the university: not, indeed, to devote myself to studying for any profession "

"The utter childishness of our provincial public's verdict upon any art-manifestation that may chance to make its first appearance in their own theatre "

"Then let us sail across the sea, and here and there found a young Germany, let us fructify it with the products of our toil and striving, and let us beget and bring up the noblest and most godlike children: but let us do better than the Spanish, who turned the New World into a papal slaughterhouse, and better than the English, who have turned it into a shop."

"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."

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

"This is a new idea, and we didn't know how it would turn out, although there has been mixed evidence from other studies suggesting that tanning increases endorphin production, which could be addictive... Certainly this could explain why educational interventions haven't been more successful."

"We who belong to none of all those parties, but seek our welfare solely in man's wakening to his simple hallowed dignity; we who are excluded from these parties as useless persons, and yet are sympathetically troubled for them, "

"This possibility, of always drawing from the pristine fount of our own nature, that makes us feel ourselves no more a race, no mere variety of man, but one of Manhood's primal branches, "

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

"Bach's spirit, the German spirit, emerged from the sanctuary of the most wonderful music, the place where it was reborn. When Goethe's G”tz appeared, a cry of joy went up: "That's German!" He showed the world what antiquity is, he showed the human spirit what Nature and the world are. These deeds the German spirit brought forth by itself from its inmost desire to become conscious of itself. And this consciousness told it what it was the first to proclaim to the world, namely, that the beautiful and the noble came into the world not for the sake of profit or even for the sake of fame and recognition, but that everything done in the spirit of this teaching is "German", and that is why the German is great; only what is done in this spirit can contribute to Germany's greatness."

"Artistic Man can only fully content himself by uniting every branch of Art into the common Artwork: in every segregation of his artistic faculties he is unfree, not fully that which he has power to be; whereas in the common Artwork he is free, and fully that which he has power to be."

"But then such a book as this is not meant to amuse."

"Bruckner he is my man!"

"Certain things in Mozart will and can never be excelled."

"Everything is according to its kind to her you will not change anything."

"Clever though be the many thoughts expressed by mouth or pen about the invention of money and its enormous value as a civilizer, against such praises should be set the curse to which it has always been doomed in song and legend. If gold here figures as the demon strangling manhood's innocence, our greatest poet shews at last the goblin's game of paper money. The Nibelung's fateful ring become a pocket-book, might well complete the eerie picture of the spectral world-controller. By the advocates of our Progressive Civilization this rulership is indeed regarded as a spiritual, nay, a moral power; for vanished Faith is now replaced by "Credit," that fiction of our mutual honesty kept upright by the most elaborate safeguards against loss and trickery."

"Fresh blows the wind the home to my Irish child, where are you now?"

"I am writing Parsifal only for my wife ? if I had to depend on the German spirit, I should have nothing more to say."

"Curiously enough, our historical memory of the splendour of the German name dates from a period that was so harmful to the German character, namely, the period when the Germans ruled over non-German (ausserdeutsche) peoples. The Italian assimilated all those aspects of antiquity that he could imitate and reproduce, while the Frenchman, in turn, borrowed from this reproduction whatever might flatter his national sense of formal elegance; only the German recognized antiquity in all its purely human originality and as something that enjoyed a significance which, totally remote from utilitarian concerns, was uniquely suited to reproducing the purely human."

"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."

"From its first faint glimmerings, History shews Man's constant progress as a beast of prey. As such he conquers every land, subdues the fruit-fed races, founds mighty realms by subjugating other subjugators, forms states and sets up civilizations, to enjoy his prey at rest."

"I know of only one composer who measures up to Beethoven, and that is Bruckner."

"I wish I could score everything for horns."

"I had translated the first twelve books of the Odyssey. For a while I learnt English also, merely so as to gain an accurate knowledge of Shakespeare; and I made a metrical translation of Romeo's monologue. Though I soon left English on one side, yet Shakespeare remained my exemplar, and I projected a great tragedy which was almost nothing but a medley of Hamlet and King Lear. The plan was gigantic in the extreme; two- and-forty human beings died in the course of this piece, and I saw myself compelled, in its working-out, to call the greater number back as ghosts, since otherwise I should have been short of characters for my last Acts. This play occupied my leisure for two whole years."

"In order to see the Performer and the Poet take natural rise, we must first imagine to ourselves the artistic Fellowship of the future; and that according to no arbitrary canon, but following the logical course which we are bound to take in drawing from the Art-work itself our conclusions as to those artistic organs which alone can call it into natural life."

"It is necessary for us to explain the involuntary repugnance we possess for the nature and personality of the Jews? The Jews have never produced a true poet. Heinrich Heine reached the point where he duped himself into a poet, and was rewarded by his versified lies being set to music by our own composers. He was the conscience of Judaism, just as Judaism is the evil conscience of our modern civilization."

"It should not be presumed that these people (the Jews), who are so separated from us by their religion, have any right to make our laws. But why blame the Jews? It is we who lack all feeling for our own identity, all sense of honor."

"It is very common for the patriot to quote his country's name in a spirit of total veneration. The more powerful a people, however, the less store it seems to set by referring to itself with such a degree of reverence. I have no doubt that it is far less common in public life in England and France for people to speak of `English' and `French virtues', whereas the Germans frequently refer to `German depth', `German seriousness', `German fidelity' and so on."