Top 60 Pablo Casals Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “To the whole world you might be just one person, but to one person you might just be the whole world.”

— Pablo Casals

2. “Music will save the world.”

— Pablo Casals

3. “The situation is hopeless, we must take the next step.”

— Pablo Casals

4. “Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart...”

— Pablo Casals

5. “I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance.”

— Pablo Casals

6. “Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe; a moment that never was before and never will be again.”

— Pablo Casals

7. “The greatest respect an artist can pay to music is to give it life.”

— Pablo Casals

8. “Don’t play the notes. Play the meaning of the notes.”

— Pablo Casals

9. “I don’t have hobbies. I have passions.”

— Pablo Casals

10. “The love of one’s country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border? There is a brotherhood among all men. This must be recognized if life is to remain. We must learn the love of man.”

— Pablo Casals

11. “The child must know that he is a miracle, that since the beginning of the world there hasn’t been, and until the end of the world there will not be, another child like him.”

— Pablo Casals

12. “Parents shouldn’t lie to their children-not even when they think it’s for their own good. Even a little lie is dangerous...”

— Pablo Casals

13. “The heart of the melody can never be put down on paper.”

— Pablo Casals

14. “If you play Bach every day, you are not so alone.”

— Pablo Casals

15. “Don’t be vain because you happen to have talent. You are not responsible for that; it was not of your doing. What you do with your talent is what matters.”

— Pablo Casals

16. “I am a very simple man. I am a man first, an artist second. My first obligation is to the welfare of my fellow man. I will endeavour to meet this obligation through music, since it transcends language, politics and national boundaries.”

— Pablo Casals

17. “The first thing to do in life is to do with purpose what one purposes to do.”

— Pablo Casals

18. “I used to think that eighty was a very old age. Now I am ninety. I do not think this any more. As long as you are able to admire and to love, you are young.”

— Pablo Casals

19. “You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.”

— Pablo Casals

20. “The earth becomes heaven when you release your fear. The main thing in life is not to be afraid of being human.”

— Pablo Casals

21. “The cello is like a beautiful woman who has not grown older, but younger with time, more slender, more supple, more graceful.”

— Pablo Casals

22. “Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it.”

— Pablo Casals

23. “We ought to think that we are one of the leaves of a tree, and the tree is all humanity. We cannot live without the others, without the tree.”

— Pablo Casals

24. “The child must know that he is a miracle, that since the beginning of the...”

— Pablo Casals

25. “The art of interpretation is not to play what is written.”

— Pablo Casals

26. “To live is not enough; we must take part.”

— Pablo Casals

27. “You do not lose your value or preciousness when you grow to be a adult. You are still that miraculous creation. You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.”

— Pablo Casals

28. “Of course, I continue to play and to practice. I think I would do so if I lived for another hundred years.”

— Pablo Casals

29. “It takes courage for people to listen to their own goodness and act on it.”

— Pablo Casals

30. “The most important thing in music is what is not in the notes.”

— Pablo Casals

31. “Resist doing things that have no meaning for life.”

— Pablo Casals

32. “When you play Bach like Chopin, and Chopin like Bach, something good happens.”

— Pablo Casals

33. “Do we dare be ourselves? That is the question that counts.”

— Pablo Casals

34. “I do not think a day passes in my life in which I fail to look with fresh amazement at the miracle of nature.”

— Pablo Casals

35. “To retire is to begin to die.”

— Pablo Casals

36. “The most perfect technique is that which is not noticed at all.”

— Pablo Casals

37. “Real understanding does not come from what we learn in books; it comes from what we learn from love of nature, of music, of man. For only what is learned in that way is truly understood.”

— Pablo Casals

38. “The person who works and is never bored is never old. Work and interest in worthwhile things are the best remedy for age.”

— Pablo Casals

39. “Every wrong seems possible today, and is accepted. I don’t accept it.”

— Pablo Casals

40. “The simplest things in music are the ones that count. The simplest thing are, of course, also the most difficult to achieve and take years of work.”

— Pablo Casals

41. “What do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are?”

— Pablo Casals

42. “Throughout my career, nervousness and stage-fright have never left me before playing. And each of the thousands of concerts I have played at, I feel as bad as I did the very first time.”

— Pablo Casals

43. “I see in the melody of Nature, God. It is a wonderful work of art. The spirit of the art is wonderful. And I feel that I am myself because I have never taken music lightly. Music is the manifestation of God, like everything else.”

— Pablo Casals

44. “The truly important things in life – love, beauty, and one’s own uniqueness – are constantly being overlooked.”

— Pablo Casals

45. “In music, in the sea, in a flower, in a leaf, in an act of kindness... I see what people call God in all these things.”

— Pablo Casals

46. “Thank God, I’ll never have to play the cello again.”

— Pablo Casals

47. “Man has made many machines, complex and cunning, but which of them indeed rivals the workings of his heart?”

— Pablo Casals

48. “Music must serve a purpose; it must be a part of something larger than itself, a part of humanity...”

— Pablo Casals

49. “I have always regarded manual labour as creative and looked with respect-and, yes, wonder-at people who work with their hands. It seems to me that their creativity is no less than that of a violinist or painter.”

— Pablo Casals

50. “Let us not forget that the greatest composers were also the greatest thieves. They stole from everyone and everywhere.”

— Pablo Casals