Talk:Richard Wagner

That's it?
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
"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.

^ 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
 * 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.


 * A political man is disgusting, but a political wife, horrible.
 * to Franz Liszt (30 January 1852)

About Wagner (unsourced)

 * 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)
 * 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.