Ignacy Jan Paderewski Quotes
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It is not from choice that my life is music and nothing more, but when one is an artist what else can he be? When a whole lifetime is too short to attain the heights he wants to reach, how then can he devote any of the little time he has to things outside of his art?
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The ultimate necessity is the summoning of the mind and will to do their duty.
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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 mere fact of knowing that a great audience waits on your labor is enough to shake all your nerves to pieces.
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There flows throughout our whole history a stream of humanity, of generosity, of tolerance, so broad, so powerful, and so pure that it would be vain indeed to look for a similar one in the past of any other European country.
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The great familiar musical works are always greeted by the audiences as ever welcome and beloved friends.
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Rhythm is the pulse of music.
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There have been a few moments when I have known complete satisfaction, but only a few. I have rarely been free from the disturbing realization that my playing might have been better.
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I cannot imagine a genuinely happy home without music in it.
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Every new generation in its hour of dawn, filled with the dreams of youth, its thirsts, intoxications and enthusiasms, thinks itself called upon to impel humanity towards heights unmeasured, believes itself an appointed pathfinder, a thinker of thoughts, a doer of deeds greater than any of those which came before. Every new generation desires beauty, but a beauty all its own.
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Intellectual isolation always follows commercial isolation.
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I loved your country [America] before I knew it.
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True originality has its foundations in the soul, not in the mind, and when there is an effort to create something different it is usually a failure. Beethoven or Schumann or Chopin did not try to be original. They were original.
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Art must be a slow and normal evolution.
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Fatherland before everything, art afterward.
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When I miss a week in practice, my audience knows it. When I miss a day, I know it.
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Chopin was an invalid, as you know, but his music was volcanic.
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Musical expression is never primarily national, but is personal and individual rather. It is so deep, so profound, that it goes beyond and below nationality and gives voice to the most private feeling. In music there is never exact heredity. Each man is an individual.
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Just as surely as every new language mastered opens up a new world, so knowledge of a Beethoven, a Chopin, or a Schumann opens up a new world in spiritual beauty and thought.
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I am inclined to believe that some music, like certain poetry, finds its appeal and way to all.