Gustav Mahler Quotes

• It is strange how one feels drawn forward without knowing at first where one is going.

  Gustav Mahler

• It is easier to achieve a desired result in short pieces.

  Gustav Mahler

• In the theatrical works we love and admire the most, the ending of the drama generally takes place offstage.

  Gustav Mahler

• In its beginnings, music was merely chamber music, meant to be listened to in a small space by a small audience.

  Gustav Mahler

• If you think you’re boring your audience, go slower not faster.

  Gustav Mahler

• If I weren’t the way I am, I shouldn’t write my symphonies.

  Gustav Mahler

• I was a crazy young man who let himself be blinded by his passions and obeyed only the impulses of the moment.

  Gustav Mahler

• I live like a Hottentot. I cannot exchange one sensible word with anyone.

  Gustav Mahler

• I hope you will no longer accuse me of a lack of delicacy. as I now count on your understanding.

  Gustav Mahler

• I have become a different person. I don’t know whether this person is better, he certainly is not happier.

  Gustav Mahler

• I don’t let myself get carried away by my own ideas – I abandon 19 out of 20 of them every day.

  Gustav Mahler

• I beg of you… never assume an inner or an outer pose, never a disguise.

  Gustav Mahler

• I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.

  Gustav Mahler

• I also had a brother who was like me a musician and a composer. A man of great talent, far more gifted than I. He died very young… he killed himself in the prime of his life.

  Gustav Mahler

• Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested. So let us not be idle.

  Gustav Mahler

• Even if people censure me, they should do so hat in hand.

  Gustav Mahler

• Don’t bother looking at the view – I have already composed it.

  Gustav Mahler

• Discipline, work. Work, discipline.

  Gustav Mahler

• Destiny smiles upon me but without making me the least bit happier.

  Gustav Mahler

• Behind me the branches of a wasted and sterile existence are cracking.

  Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler (46)

Birth:	7th July, 1860
Death:	18th May, 1911
Nationality:	Austrian
Profession:	Composer, Music Conductor

About

Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. A Jew, he was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then the Austrian Empire, now Kaliste in the Czech Republic. His family later moved to nearby Iglau, where Mahler grew up.

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