Johannes Brahms famous quotes

05-18-2025

Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Inspirational #Inspiring #Wind
The only true immortality lies in one's children.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Children #Lying #Immortality
The idea comes to me from outside of me - and is like a gift. I then take the idea and make it my own - that is where the skill lies.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Lying #Skills #Ideas
If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted, I beg his pardon.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Leaving #Insult #Pardon
A symphony is no joke.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Symphony #Jokes
Straight-away the ideas flow in upon me, directly from God, and not only do I see distinct themes in my mind's eye, but they are clothed in the right forms, harmonies, and orchestration.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Eye #Ideas #Mind
Those who enjoy their own emotionally bad health and who habitually fill their own minds with the rank poisons of suspicion, jealousy and hatred, as a rule take umbrage at those who refuse to do likewise, and they find a perverted relief in trying to denigrate them.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Jealousy #Hatred #Mind
Study Bach. There you will find everything.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Study
Ah, that tastes nice. Thank you.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Nice #Dying #Taste
It is not hard to compose, but what is fabulously hard is to leave the superfluous notes under the table.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Tables #Fabulous #Notes
How lucky is the man who, like Mozart and others, goes to the tavern of an evening and writes some fresh music. For he lives while he is creating.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Writing #Men #Creating
Straightaway the ideas flow in upon me, directly from God.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Ideas #Flow
My things really are written with an appalling lack of practicality!
-- Johannes Brahms

#Practicality
Reviewer: 'One of your themes was very similar to one of Beethoven's!' Brahms replied, 'Of course it is. Everyone steals - the important thing is to do it brilliantly.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Important #Copying #Stealing
I sometimes ponder on variation form and it seems to me it ought to be more restrained, purer.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Variation #Sometimes #Form
In him converge all previous streams of tendency, not as into a pool, stagnant, passive, motionless, but as a noble river that received its tributary waters and bearss them onward in larger and statelier volume.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Music #Rivers #Water
Never criticize the composition of a Royal Highness. You never know who may have written it.
-- Johannes Brahms

#May #Royal #Criticize
Those are miracles that no merely human brain can work. The artist is merely the sound conduct of a Force that dictates to him what he should do.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Music #Artist #Miracle
The fact that most people do not understand and respect the very best things, such as Mozart's concertos, is what permits men like us to become famous.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Men #People #Facts
Composers in the old days used to keep strictly to the base of the theme, as their real subject. Beethoven varies the melody, harmony and rhythms so beautifully.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Real #Harmony #Theme
We cling nervously to the melody, but we don't handle it freely, we don't really make anything new out of it, we merely overload it.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Melody #Handle
One should never forget that by actually perfecting one piece one gains and learns more than by starting or half-finishing a dozen.
-- Johannes Brahms

#Life And Love #Gains #Finishing

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