Chopin Quotes

“Bach is an astronomer, discovering the most marvellous stars. Beethoven challenges the universe. I only try to express the soul and the heart of man.”
― Frédéric Chopin

“[On Chopin's Preludes:]

"His genius was filled with the mysterious sounds of nature, but transformed into sublime equivalents in musical thought, and not through slavish imitation of the actual external sounds. His composition of that night was surely filled with raindrops, resounding clearly on the tiles of the Charterhouse, but it had been transformed in his imagination and in his song into tears falling upon his heart from the sky. ... The gift of Chopin is [the expression of] the deepest and fullest feelings and emotions that have ever existed. He made a single instrument speak a language of infinity. He could often sum up, in ten lines that a child could play, poems of a boundless exaltation, dramas of unequalled power.”
― George Sand, Story of My Life: The Autobiography of George Sand

“Beethoven introduced us to anger. Haydn taught us capriciousness, Rachmaninoff melancholy. Wagner was demonic. Bach was pious. Schumann was mad, and because his genius was able to record his fight for sanity, we heard what isolation and the edge of lunacy sounded like. Liszt was lusty and vigorous and insisted that we confront his overwhelming sexuality as well as our own. Chopin was a poet, and without him we never would have understood what night was, what perfume was, what romance was.”
― Doris Mortman, The Wild Rose

“Kalkbrenner has made me an offer; that I should study with him for three years, and he will make something really - really out of me. I answered that I know how much I lack; but that I cannot exploit him, and three years is too much. But he has convinced me that I can play admirably when I am in the mood, and badly when I am not; a thing which never happens to him. After close examination he told me that I have no school; that I am on an excellent road, but can slip off the track. That after his death, or when he finally stops playing, there will be no representative of the great piano-forte school. That even if I wish it, I cannot build up a new school without knowing the old one; in a word : that I am not a perfected machine, and that this hampers the flow of my thoughts. That I have a mark in composition; that it would be a pity not to become what I have the promise of being...”
― Fryderyk Chopin

“Yeah. I like Chopin. I feel like Chopin is ‘emo.’ Do you like Chopin?”
― Tao Lin, Shoplifting from American Apparel

“Love is an art, Berk. Just like painting or music. Some painters draw mere lines, scratches on the canvas and call them art; some paint stars studded skies like van Gogh; or Chopin’s music conquers the hearts of millions while the execrable disco music blaring out of the open windows of a car have also their audience. Some describe love in high-flown flowery language and you identify yourself with the hero and the heroine and feel yourself in the seventh heaven while some give such a lamentable picture of it that you almost curse it!”
― T. Afsin Ilgar, Locked Lives

“Something flickered in the distance, dressing the darkness in a soft veil of blue. Out of the blue came an explosion of sounds followed by the seamlessly expressed melancholy of Chopin’s “Ballade no. 1.”
― Ella Leya, The Orphan Sky

“Q: What genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid?

A: I love reading anything about gigantic animate blobs of molten iron who secretly long to be concert pianists. It’s not a particularly well-populated genre, but in particular I’d mention, “Grog, Who Loved Chopin,” as well as the somewhat derivative “Clom, Big Fan of Mozart.”
― George Saunders

“You are like a living Chopin nocturne. A soft, yet stirring harmony meant to be enjoyed at night...”
― Beth Fantaskey

“— Êtes-vous polythéiste, monsieur ?
— Pardon ?
— Moi je suis monothéiste. Je n’aime qu’un compositeur : Chopin. Je possède la conviction de n’avoir été envoyée sur terre que pour jouer et écouter Chopin.”
― Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Madame Pylinska et le secret de Chopin

“Prostota to ostatnie osiągnięcie. Po zagraniu ogromnej ilości nut i większej ilości nut, prostota staje się ukoronowaniem sztuki.

(Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.)”
― Frédéric Chopin

“Um dia, em conversa com alguns colegas da orquestra que em tom ligeiro
falavam sobre a possibilidade da composição de retratos musicais, retratos autênticos, (...) lembrou-se de dizer que o seu retrato, no caso de existir de facto em música, não o encontrariam em nenhuma composição para violoncelo, mas num brevíssimo estudo de chopin, opus vinte e cinco, número nove, em sol bemol maior.”
― José Saramago

“Their mother had white hands, long tapered fingers, and when she kneaded dough, her wedding ring clinked against the bowl. She was always singing softly as she played the piano with her white hands. She accompanied Emily's dance recitals and she could play anything, but Chopin was the one that Gillian loved. She played Chopin every night, and when she turned the pages, she wasn't really looking at the music. She knew the saddest Waltzes by heart. The saddest were the ones that she knew best, and she would play at bedtime, so falling asleep was like drifting off in autumn forests filled with golden leaves.”
― Allegra Goodman, The Cookbook Collector

“Chopin did not wrote anything for the Violin, because all his music is written for the Violin.”
― Jean-Michel Rene Souche

“Rada zatvori vrata, sede za klavir i sobu ubrzo ispuniše čarobni zvuci Šopenove "Revolucionarne etide". Svirala je zatvorenih očiju, ali brzo i energično, kao da je želela da je cela škola čuje. Kad je završila, sačekala je da poslednji ton zamre i tek onda otvorila oči-”
― Zoran Božović, Volim te, Sandra, ako nije problem

“Yet I stand, my back is arched
Frederick Chopin, Funeral March
Hands on the clock, they stop

They wave, they smile and say my time is up”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Letter 19

“Tegoż roku podróżowałem po Polsce - dwóch nas było: ś.p. Władzio Wężyk i ja - mieliśmy z sobą kilkadziesiąt tomów książek, mianowicie historii dotyczących kronik i pamiętników. Szlachcic jeden, bardzo szanowny obywatel i dobry sąsiad, i dobry patriota, zobaczywszy podróżną biblioteczkę naszą, ruszył głową i mruknął : "To chleba nie daje!..."

Wszelako jednego razu tenże sam, w żółtym szlafroku, w czapce z guzikiem na szczycie głowy i z fajką na długim przedziurawionym kiju, wchodzi do nas: "Oto (powiada półgębkiem i przez ramię) dajcie mi też jaką książkę z brzega, bo idę spać do ogrodu."

Brałem przeto z brzega książkę i podawałem ostrożnie obywatelowi, tak jako w kwarantannie podaje się z rąk do rąk, ile możności dotknięcia osoby unikając.

I widziałem tylko tył osoby poważnej w szlafroku żółtym popstrzonym w duże kwiaty piwonii - rzecz ta wychodziła z książką w ręku a po niedługim przeciągu czasu widziałeś tęż samą postać na trawniku snem ujętą.

- Wszelako, po wielu i wielu latach spotkałem na ekspozycji w Paryżu potomka owegoż obywatela.

Ten mówił mi o sztukach pięknych różne spostrzeżenia swoje... "Lubię i muzykę! (powiadał mi) Lubię i muzykę, i jak sobie wrócę z pola, a człowiek mi buty ściągnie, to ja sobie lubię tak dumać i nogi moczyć, i słuchać, jak mi żona moja gra na fortepianie Chopina!...

Malaturę (malaturę!...) także lubiłem - nim-em się ożenił!"

Nigdy pojąć nie mogłem, dlaczego malarstwa zaniechał on lubować, odkąd ożenił się - myślę, że to znaczy, iż ideał-wcielony zajął miejsce onej malatury, która pierwej była obywatelowi przyjemną.

Szkoda, że nieboszczyk Fryderyk nie wiedział nic o tym!!”
― Cyprian Kamil Norwid

“Where do you think the notes were before Chopin wrote his nocturnes?”
With a nod of confusion I asked, “Where?”
She leaned back, exhaling a stream of smoke, as if unraveling a hidden truth. “I believe those notes were always present, suspended in the air, waiting for an artist's embrace. It's as if there's an intangible essence, an elusive sense, that artists possess. They have the ability to pluck those ethereal notes from the unseen and mold them into tangible forms, giving voice to our deepest emotions and translating them into melodies that resonate within us.”
― Asif Hossain, Serenade of Solitude

“Lubię i muzykę! (powiadał mi) Lubię i muzykę, i jak sobie wrócę z pola, a człowiek mi buty ściągnie, to ja sobie lubię tak dumać i nogi moczyć, i słuchać, jak mi żona moja gra na fortepianie Chopina!...

Malaturę (malaturę!...) także lubiłem - nim-em się ożenił!"

Nigdy pojąć nie mogłem, dlaczego malarstwa zaniechał on lubować, odkąd ożenił się - myślę, że to znaczy, iż ideał-wcielony zajął miejsce onej malatury, która pierwej była obywatelowi przyjemną.

Szkoda, że nieboszczyk Fryderyk nie wiedział nic o tym!!”
― Cyprian Kamil Norwid, Proza

“How lovely that thing you are playing is! I wonder, did Chopin write it at Majorca, with the sea weeping round the villa and the salt spray dashing against the panes? It is marvellously romantic.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray