Top 35 Franz Schubert Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I try to decorate my imagination as much as I can.”

— Franz Schubert

2. “Happy is the man who finds a true friend, and far happier is he who finds that true friend in his wife.”

— Franz Schubert

3. “Who can do anything after Beethoven?”

— Franz Schubert

4. “Anyone who loves music can never be quite unhappy.”

— Franz Schubert

5. “There is no such thing as happy music.”

— Franz Schubert

6. “No one feels another’s grief, no one understands another’s joy. People imagine they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by.”

— Franz Schubert

7. “Every night when I go to bed, I hope that I may never wake again, and every morning renews my grief.”

— Franz Schubert

8. “No one really understands the grief or joy of another. We always imagine that we are approaching some other, but our lines of travel are actually parallel.”

— Franz Schubert

9. “You believe happiness to be derived from the place in which once you have been happy, but in truth it is centered in ourselves.”

— Franz Schubert

10. “Easy mind, light heart. A mind that is too easy hides a heart that is too heavy.”

— Franz Schubert

11. “I am in the world only for the purpose of composing.”

— Franz Schubert

12. “O Mozart, immortal Mozart, how many, how infinitely many inspiring suggestions of a finer, better life you have left in our souls!”

— Franz Schubert

13. “When I wished to sing of love, it turned to sorrow. And when I wished to sing of sorrow, it was transformed for me into love.”

— Franz Schubert

14. “If only your pure and clean mind could touch me, dear Haydn, nobody has a greater reverence for you than I have.”

— Franz Schubert

15. “The guitar is a wonderful instrument which is understood by few.”

— Franz Schubert

16. “Love is in the air these days, so we thought we’d give a try to make your day a little brighter.”

— Franz Schubert

17. “The greatest misfortune of the wise man and the greatest unhappiness of the fool are based upon convention.”

— Franz Schubert

18. “Above all things, I must not get angry. If I do get angry I knock all the teeth out of the mouth of the poor wretch who has angered me.”

— Franz Schubert

19. “My compositions spring from my sorrows. Those that give the world the greatest delight were born of my deepest griefs.”

— Franz Schubert

20. “What a picture of a better world you have given us, Mozart!”

— Franz Schubert

21. “I am composing like a god, as if it simply had to be done as it has been done.”

— Franz Schubert

22. “Why does God endow us with compassion?”

— Franz Schubert

23. “There are eight girls in the house in which I am living, and practically all of them are good looking. You can realize that I am kept busy.”

— Franz Schubert

24. “It sometimes seems to me as if I do not belong to this world at all. I deplore music that engenders in people not love but madness: which rouses them to scornful laughter instead of lifting their thoughts to God.”

— Franz Schubert

25. “One bites into the brass mouthpiece of his wooden cudgel, and the other blows his cheeks out on a French horn. Do you call that Art?”

— Franz Schubert

26. “Our castle is not imposing, but is well built, and surrounded by a very fine garden. I live in the bailiff’s house.”

— Franz Schubert

27. “The world resembles a stage on which every man is playing a part.”

— Franz Schubert

28. “The manager is to be blamed who distributes parts to his players which they are unable to act.”

— Franz Schubert

29. “A man endures misfortune without complaint.”

— Franz Schubert

30. “No one feels another’s grief...”

— Franz Schubert

31. “There are two contrary impulses which govern this man’s brain-the one sane, and the other eccentric. They alternate at regular intervals.”

— Franz Schubert

32. “I never force myself to be devout except when I feel so inspired, and never compose hymns of prayers unless I feel within me real and true devotion.”

— Franz Schubert

33. “No one really understands the grief or joy of another.”

— Franz Schubert

34. “Why should the composer be more guilty than the poet who warms to fantasy by a strange flame, making an idea that inspires him the subject of his own very different treatment?”

— Franz Schubert

35. “Approval or blame will follow in the world to come.”

— Franz Schubert

36. “With a heart filled with endless love for those who scorned me, I wandered far away. For many and many a year I sang songs. Whenever I tried to sing of love, it turned to pain. And again, when I tried to sing of pain, it turned to love.”

— Franz Schubert