Ignacy Jan Paderewski Quotes
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If I miss one day of practice, I notice it. If I miss two days, the critics notice it. If I miss three days, the audience notices it.
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I established a certain standard of behavior, that, during my playing, there must be no talking.
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You are a dear soul who plays polo, and I am a poor Pole who plays solo.
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Music expresses first of all sadness rather than joy.
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The genius is the man who has genuine and deep human relations with others, who does not cut himself off in the search for originality, but who realizes the value of artistic tradition.
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Piano playing is more difficult than statesmanship. It is harder to awake emotions in ivory keys than it is in human beings.
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The very essence of success is practice.
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America, the country of my heart, my second home.
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Art is the expression of the immortal part of man.
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Man is naturally lazy, therefore he invents labor-saving devices.
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Is there anything more true than human pain? Is there anything more sincere than the cry for help from those who suffer? Only a great wave of mankind's pity can surmount an immense wave of human misery?
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Before I was a genius I was a drudge.
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Change follows change in us, almost without transition; we pass from blissful rapture to sobbing woe; a single step divides our sublimest ecstasies from the darkest depth of spiritual despondency.
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Art is great only when it bears the stamp of the individual.
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I am nothing! If you could know the dream of what I would like to be, you would realize how little I have accomplished.
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The culture of any country is gauged first by its progress in art.
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If I do not practice one day; I know it. If I do not practice the next, the orchestra knows it; if I do not practice the third day, the whole world knows it.
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A man is not necessarily a master because he happened to compose two or three centuries ago. Let us beware of the worship of mere antiquity.
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Music is the only art that actually lives.
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I do not believe, as do so many musicians, that genius should be left to fight its way to the light. Genius is too rare, too precious, to be permitted to waste the best years of life--the years of youth and lofty dreams--in a heart-breaking struggle for bread. To starve the soul with the body is to do worse than murder. Think, too, of what the public loses!
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The Pole listening to Chopin listens to the voice of his whole race.
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I owe my sucess in one per cent to my talent, in ten per cent to luck, and in ninety per cent to hard word. Work, work, and more work is the secret to success.
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Beginnings play their prized part in every finished human accomplishment, for beginnings mean the birth of added progress.
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The ultimate necessity is the summoning of the mind and will to do their duty.