What’s even worse than a flute? – Two flutes!

To talk well and eloquently is a very great art, but that an equally great one is to know the right moment to stop.

I pay no attention whatever to anybody’s praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.

Stay with me to-night; you must see me die. I have long had the taste of death on my tongue, I smell death, and who will stand by my Constanze, if you do not stay?

A man of ordinary talent will always be ordinary, whether he travels or not; but a man of superior talent will go to pieces if he remains forever in the same place.

As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relationships with this best and truest friend of mankind...

All I insist on, and nothing else, is that you should show the whole world that you are not afraid. Be silent, if you choose; but when it is necessary, speak—and speak in such a...

It is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as...

The only thing–I tell you this straight from the heart–that disgusts me in Salzburg is that one can’t have any proper social intercourse with those people–and that music does not have a better reputation…For I...

The music is not in the notes,but in the silence between.

When I am ….. completely myself, entirely alone… or during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how these ideas come...

Melody is the essence of music. I compare a good melodist to a fine racer, and counterpointists to hack post-horses; therefore be advised, let well alone and remember the old Italian proverb: Chi sa più,...