My imagination can picture no fairer happiness than to continue living for art.
Treasures are no longer to be got by instrumental art.
Is an artist much more than a beggar?
There is nothing greater than the joy of composing something oneself and then listening to it.
I do not want horses or diamonds - I am happy in possessing you.
If I have known much trouble in my youth, I have also known much joy.
My health may be better preserved if I exert myself less, but in the end doesn't each person give his life for his calling?
The tea is ice-cold, the room grows colder and colder, but I grow warmer and warmer.
Every man has his faults; I have and so have you - you will allow me to say so!
I wish to lead a life free from care, and I see that I shall be unhappy if I cannot always work at my art.
Why hurry over beautiful things? Why not linger and enjoy them?
I cannot give a single concert at which I do not play one piece after the other in an agony of terror because my memory threatens to fail me. This fear torments me for days beforehand."
Composing gives me great pleasure...there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound.
I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose—there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?
I am not doing to much for I feel no less freshness and warmth than I did twenty years ago. On the contrary, I feel younger and believe that a quieter life would leave me too much time to broon on my sorrows
One cannot have a friendly relationship with the mother which doed not carry over to the children
I am not master of my time and energies so that I can burrow in a work for days, as Frau von H. does
They [the von Herzogenbergs] have all the time in the world while I have lessons to gine in the morning, am entirely exhausted in the afternoon and continually have a piano loaded with proofs for Härtel, which also demands strength
Today I gave a concert at the Conservatoire and I was recalled 13 times. Great heavens! I never saw such enthusiasm before. There were all the curtsies, which you know I do so abominably!
Play with truth, sincerity and love
I cannot be so bad when everybody is so fond of me.
I can give a concert every winter which will bring me 1,000 Thaler easily, with the high prices of admission which they have here.
Work is always the best diversion from pain.
I love my husband!: "Clara has composed a series of small pieces, which show a musical and tender ingenuity such as she has never attained before. But to have children, and a husband who is always living in the realm of imagination, does not go together with composing. She cannot work at it regularly, and I am often disturbed to think how many profound ideas are lost because she cannot work them out." -Robert
My piano playing is falling behind. This always happens when Robert is composing. There is not even one little hour in the whole day for myself. If only I don't fall too far behind... I cannot do anything with my composing - I would sometimes like to strike my dumb head.
When I can work regularly I feel once more really in my element. A quite different feeling comes over me, lighter and freer and everything seems to become brighter and cheerful. Music is a large part of my life, and when I must do without it, it is as if I were deprived of bodily and mental vigour.
My husband to be said this of me: "I have but one thought to depict everywhere in letters and chords, CLARA.
I do not want horses or diamonds - I am happy in possessing you.
My first public concert and I made the review: "[...] it was especially pleasing to hear the young, musically talented Clara Wieck, just nine years old, perform [...] We may entertain the greatest hopes for this child, who has been trained under the direction of her experienced father." - Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung
My husband once said: "To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist."
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