Talk:Richard Wagner
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[edit]The best quotes you can find about Wagner? I think I've seen most of them scribbled in toilet stalls.
^^ I was going to write the same thing. Wikiquote creator for Wagner: Congrats for the blog feel. It's important that Wikipedia not be taken seriously, and this kind of page helps.
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
[edit]"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
[edit]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!
- After Rossini dies, who will there be to defend his music?
- Joy is not in things; it is in us.
^ Not from the composer. The proper attribution is to French pastor and author Charles Wagner (1852-1916) as translated into English by Mary Louise Hendee. The quote comes from the book 'The Simple Life' (1901), Section VII 'Simple Pleasures', paragraph 3, last sentence: 'Joy is not in things, it is in us, and I hold to the belief that the causes of our present unrest, of this contagious discontent spreading everywhere, are in us at least as much as in exterior conditions.' http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23092/23092-h/23092-h.htm
- A political man is disgusting, but a political wife, horrible.
- to Franz Liszt (30 January 1852) [specific citation needed]
About Wagner (unsourced)
[edit]- Wagner has great moments but dull quarter hours - Rossini
- Every time I listen to Wagner, I get the urge to invade Poland - Woody Allen, Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) [1]
- 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
- "The peculiar characteristic of classical music is that it is really so much better than it sounds,” Bill Nye (1850-1896) in September 1887, often cited as "Wagner's music is better than it sounds" and attribuated to Mark Twain.