Top 60 Gustav Mahler Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”

— Gustav Mahler

Featured in: Quotes About Fire

2. “A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.”

— Gustav Mahler

3. “Tradition is tending the flame, not worshiping the ashes.”

— Gustav Mahler

4. “Discipline, work. Work, discipline.”

— Gustav Mahler

5. “The point is not to take the world’s opinion as a guiding star but to go one’s way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause.”

— Gustav Mahler

6. “What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.”

— Gustav Mahler

7. “Spring won’t let me stay in this house any longer! I must get out and breathe the air deeply again.”

— Gustav Mahler

8. “To write a symphony is, for me, to construct a world.”

— Gustav Mahler

9. “If you think you’re boring your audience, go slower not faster.”

— Gustav Mahler

10. “With the coming of spring, I am calm again.”

— Gustav Mahler

11. “I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.”

— Gustav Mahler

12. “Tradition is laziness.”

— Gustav Mahler

13. “I am thrice homeless, as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed.”

— Gustav Mahler

14. “If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.”

— Gustav Mahler

15. “It is a funny thing, but when I am making music, all the answers I seek for in life seem to be there, in the music. Or rather, I should say, when I am making music, there are no questions and no need for answers.”

— Gustav Mahler

16. “Life’s been nothing but paperwork.”

— Gustav Mahler

17. “I don’t choose what I compose. It chooses me.”

— Gustav Mahler

18. “The longer you live and the more you learn, the more clearly you will feel the difference between the few men who are truly great and the mere virtuosi.”

— Gustav Mahler

19. “Don’t bother looking at the view – I have already composed it.”

— Gustav Mahler

20. “It’s not just a question of conquering a summit previously unknown, but of tracing, step by step, a new pathway to it.”

— Gustav Mahler

21. “It should be one’s sole endeavor to see everything afresh and create it anew.”

— Gustav Mahler

22. “God can only be comprehended as Love.”

— Gustav Mahler

23. “I am thrice homeless, as a bohemian, as an Austrian, and all over the world, you guessed it right I am Jewish.”

— Gustav Mahler

24. “But it’s peculiar, as soon as I am in the midst of nature and by myself, everything that is base and trivial vanishes without trace. On such days nothing scares me; and this helps me again and again.”

— Gustav Mahler

25. “When I have reached a summit, I leave it with great reluctance, unless it is to reach for another, higher one.”

— Gustav Mahler

26. “I don’t let myself get carried away by my own ideas; I abandon 19 out of 20 of them every day.”

— Gustav Mahler

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

— Gustav Mahler

28. “The call of love sounds very hollow among these immobile rocks.”

— Gustav Mahler

29. “Melodic invention is one of the surest signs of a divine gift.”

— Gustav Mahler

30. “It is always the same with me; only when I experience something do I compose, and only when composing do I experience! After all, a musician’s nature can hardly be expressed in words.”

— Gustav Mahler

31. “If I weren’t the way I am, I shouldn’t write my symphonies.”

— Gustav Mahler

32. “Only when I experience do I compose – only when I compose do I experience.”

— Gustav Mahler

33. “It is easier to achieve a desired result in short pieces.”

— Gustav Mahler

34. “It is strange how one feels drawn forward without knowing at first where one is going.”

— Gustav Mahler

35. “My time will come, that is: after the finish of the recurring song cycles.”

— Gustav Mahler

36. “A full cup of wine at the right time is worth more than all the kingdoms of this earth!”

— Gustav Mahler

37. “There is a world of difference between a Mahler eighth note and a normal eighth note.”

— Gustav Mahler

38. “Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested. So let us not be idle.”

— Gustav Mahler

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

— Gustav Mahler

40. “All that is not perfect down to the smallest detail is doomed to perish.”

— Gustav Mahler

41. “Don’t bother to look, I’ve composed all this already.”

— Gustav Mahler

42. “Destiny smiles upon me but without making me the least bit happier.”

— Gustav Mahler

43. “You must renounce all superficiality, all convention, all vanity and delusion.”

— Gustav Mahler

44. “In Bach, the vital cells of music are united as the world is in God.”

— Gustav Mahler

45. “Never let oneself be guided by the opinion of one’s contemporaries. Continue steadfastly on one’s way.”

— Gustav Mahler

46. “Behind me the branches of a wasted and sterile existence are cracking.”

— Gustav Mahler

47. “Both my marriages were failures! Number one departed, and number two stayed.”

— Gustav Mahler

48. “An operetta is simply a small and gay opera.”

— Gustav Mahler

49. “The real art of conducting consists in transitions.”

— Gustav Mahler

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

— Gustav Mahler