Frédéric Chopin

Music Polish-French 1810 – 1849 369 quotes

Poet of the piano, transformed piano music

Most quoted

"One needs only to study a certain positioning of the hand in relation to the keys to obtain with ease the most beautiful sounds, to know how to play long notes and short notes and to [attain] certain unlimited dexterity... A well formed technique, it seems to me, [is one] that can control and vary a beautiful sound quality."

— from Prose writings

"Paris is whatever you want it to be. You can amuse yourself, be bored, laugh, cry, do whatever you like, and no one will so much as look at you, because thousands of others are doing exactly the same thing, each in his own way."

— from Letter, 1831

"When one does a thing, it appears good, otherwise one would not write it. Only later comes reflection, and one discards or accepts the thing. Time is the best censor, and patience a most excellent teacher."

— from Attributed remark

All quotes by Frédéric Chopin (369)

I am not a conformist; I am an individualist.

Attributed

I am not a conformist; I am an original.

Attributed

I am not a conformist; I am a nonconformist.

Attributed

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a immense number of notes and many, many notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.

Attributed

I am not a great man, I am a musician.

Attributed

I wish I could throw off the thoughts of my work, and go and lie down and think of nothing.

Letter to Julian Fontana

Sometimes I can only groan, and suffer, and feel the agonies of hell.

Letter to Julian Fontana

I have no fixed ideas, I am always changing.

Attributed

The public is a monster, and I am its victim.

Attributed

I am a lonely man, and I have no one to talk to.