Frédéric Chopin Quotes

“After a rest in Edinburgh, where, passing a music-shop, I heard some blind man playing a mazurka of mine.”

“Even in winter it shall be green in my heart.”

“I am gay on the outside, especially among my own folk (I count Poles my own); but inside something gnaws at me; some presentiment, anxiety, dreams – or sleeplessness – melancholy, indifference – desire for life, and the next instant, desire for death; some kind of sweet peace, some kind of numbness, absent-mindedness.”

“I could express my feelings more easily if they could be put into the notes of music, but as the very best concert would not cover my affection for you, dear daddy, I must use the simple words of my heart, to lay before you my utmost gratitude and filial affection”

“I haven't heard anything so great for a long time; Beethoven snaps his fingers at the whole world.”

“If I were still stupider than I am, I should think myself at the apex of my career; yet I know how much I still lack, to reach perfection; I see it the more clearly now that I live only among first-rank artists and know what each one of them lacks.”

“It's a huge Carthusian monastery, stuck down between rocks and sea, where you may imagine me, without white gloves or hair curling, as pale as ever, in a cell with such doors as Paris never had for gates.

The cell is the shape of a tall coffin, with an enormous dusty vaulting, a small window...

Bach, my scrawls and waste paper – silence – you could scream – there would still be silence. Indeed, I write to you from a strange place.”

“Sometimes I can only groan, and suffer, and pour out my despair at the piano.”

“The Official Bulletin declared that the Poles should be as proud of me as the Germans are of Mozart; obvious nonsense.”