Talk:Richard Wagner

I created this article. My Wikipedia name is Zaorish, but for some reason it doesn't work on Wikiquote. I will try and source the first quote tonight.

--I asked a friend, who said he'd heard that quote attributed to Wagner by Placido Domingo on a TV program.

Bad Source

"I hate this fast growing tendency to chain men to machines in big factories and deprive them of all joy in their efforts — the plan will lead to cheap men and cheap products." It is not located in "Art and Revolution" - the only source for this quote comes from a 1903 out of print biography by Elbert Hubbard. I've removed it for this reason. He does not give a source, and there is little evidence that Wagner actually said or wrote it. 184.8.136.38 05:27, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Unsourced

Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable and precise source for any quote on this list please move it to Richard Wagner.

• From wisdom, understanding. From understanding, compassion. From compassion, love.
• I believe that through art all men are saved.
• I know absolutely nothing about music.
• I write music with an exclamation mark!
• Joy is not in things; it is in us.
• After Rossini dies, who will there be to defend his music?

About Wagner (unsourced)

• Wagner's music is better than it sounds - Mark Twain
• Wagner has great moments but dull quarter hours - Rossini
• Every time I listen to Wagner, I get the urge to invade Poland - Woody Allen
• I love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window, trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws. - Charles Baudelaire
• One simply can not judge Wagner's 'Lohengrin' after a first hearing. Pity I don't intend hearing it a second time. - Gioacchino Antonio Rossini
• The prelude to Wagner's 'Tristan und Isolde' reminds one of the old Italian painting of a martyr whose intestines are slowly unwound from his body on a reel. - Eduard Hanslick
• I grant you that the 'Nibelungen Ring' is funny, although mythical, but it is not a patch on the story of the coming into being of the Sydney Opera House. - Anna Russel
• The leitmotiv system of the 'Ring' strikes me as a sort of vast musical city directory. - Claude Debussy
• The principle of the endless melody is the perpetual becoming of a music that never had any reason for starting, any more than it has any reason for ending. - Igor Stravinsky
• Wagner's aunt was so musical that when she came to a five-barred gate, she stopped and sang the spots on her veil. - Beachcomber