Frédéric Chopin > Quotes

“It is dreadful when something weighs on your mind, not to have a soul to unburden yourself to. You know what I mean. I tell my piano the things I used to tell you.”
― Frédéric Chopin

“Bach is an astronomer, discovering the most marvellous stars. Beethoven challenges the universe. I only try to express the soul and the heart of man.”
― Frédéric Chopin

“I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness, and yet I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them.”
― Frédéric Chopin

“I tell my piano the things I used to tell you”
― Frédéric Chopin

“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.”
― Frédéric Chopin

“When one does a thing, it appears good, otherwise one would not write it. Only later comes reflection, and one discards or accepts the thing. Time is the best censor, and patience a most excellent teacher.”
― Frederic Chopin

“How strange! This bed on which I shall lie has been slept on by more than one dying man, but today it does not repel me! Who knows what corpses have lain on it and for how long? But is a corpse any worse than I? A corpse too knows nothing of its father, mother or sisters or Titus. Nor has a corpse a sweetheart. A corpse, too, is pale, like me. A corpse is cold, just as I am cold and indifferent to everything. A corpse has ceased to live, and I too have had enough of life…. Why do we live on through this wretched life which only devours us and serves to turn us into corpses? The clocks in the Stuttgart belfries strike the midnight hour. Oh how many people have become corpses at this moment! Mothers have been torn from their children, children from their mothers - how many plans have come to nothing, how much sorrow has sprung from these depths, and how much relief!… Virtue and vice have come in the end to the same thing! It seems that to die is man’s finest action - and what might be his worst? To be born, since that is the exact opposite of his best deed. It is therefore right of me to be angry that I was ever born into this world! Why was I not prevented from remaining in a world where I am utterly useless? What good can my existence bring to anyone? … But wait, wait! What’s this? Tears? How long it is since they flowed! How is this, seeing that an arid melancholy has held me for so long in its grip? How good it feels - and sorrowful. Sad but kindly tears! What a strange emotion! Sad but blessed. It is not good for one to be sad, and yet how pleasant it is - a strange state…”
― Frederic Chopin

“Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.”
― Frederic Chopin

“how dismal it is to have no one to go to in the morning to share one’s griefs and joys; how hateful when something weighs on you and there’s nowhere to lay it down. You know to what I refer. I often tell to my pianoforte what I want to tell to you.”
― Frédéric Chopin, Chopin's Letters

“My earthly body has been a terrible disappointment to me.”
― Frédéric Chopin

“I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness.”
― Frédéric Chopin

“I don't know where there can be so many pianists as in Paris, so many asses and so many virtuosi.”
― Frédéric Chopin

“I wish I could throw off the thoughts that poison my happiness, and yet I love to indulge in them;”
― Frédéric Chopin, Chopin's Letters

“So, having dried my tear-swollen eyelids, I take up my pen to inquire of you, are you alive or did you die? If you are dead, please let me know, and I will tell the cook, for ever since she heard about it she has been saying her prayers.”
― Frédéric Chopin, Chopin's Letters

“Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties. It is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.”
― Chopin

“Kalkbrenner has made me an offer; that I should study with him for three years, and he will make something really - really out of me. I answered that I know how much I lack; but that I cannot exploit him, and three years is too much. But he has convinced me that I can play admirably when I am in the mood, and badly when I am not; a thing which never happens to him. After close examination he told me that I have no school; that I am on an excellent road, but can slip off the track. That after his death, or when he finally stops playing, there will be no representative of the great piano-forte school. That even if I wish it, I cannot build up a new school without knowing the old one; in a word : that I am not a perfected machine, and that this hampers the flow of my thoughts. That I have a mark in composition; that it would be a pity not to become what I have the promise of being...”
― Fryderyk Chopin

“Zaman en iyi yargıç, sabır eşsiz bir öğretmendir. ”
― Frederic Chopin

“Regardless of my transient joys, I am never free of a feeling of melancholy which somehow forms the base of my heart.”
― Chopin

“Youth is an obligation; that is to say, you have an absolute duty to be happy and to preserve a good memory of yourself for one who loves you.”
― Frédéric Chopin, Chopin's Letters

“To die is man’s finest action - and what might be his worst? To be born.”
― Frédéric Chopin

“I tell you piano the things I used to tell you”
― Frédéric Chopin

“One can’t have everything in this world; be content with the greatest of joys: health.”
― Frédéric Chopin, Chopin's Letters

“You know how easily things grow out of nothing, when they pass through a mouth that smears them all over and makes something else out of them—”
― Frédéric Chopin, Chopin's Letters

“Bach é um astrônomo, descobrindo as estrelas mais maravilhosas. Beethoven desafia o universo. Eu apenas tento expressar a alma e o coração do homem.
Frédéric Chopin”
― Frédéric Chopin

“Chaque difficulté sera un fantôme qui perturbera votre repos plus tard.”
― Frédéric Chopin

“Prostota to ostatnie osiągnięcie. Po zagraniu ogromnej ilości nut i większej ilości nut, prostota staje się ukoronowaniem sztuki.

(Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.)”
― Frédéric Chopin

“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art. When one does a thing, it appears good, otherwise one would not write it. Only later comes reflection, and one discards or accepts the thing.”
― Frédéric Chopin