Franz Schubert
Master of the art song (Lied)
Most quoted
"I am the unhappiest, most wretched man in the world. Imagine a man whose health will never be right again, and who in sheer despair over this, always makes things worse instead of better; imagine a man, I say, whose most brilliant hopes have come to naught, to whom the happiness of love and friendship offers nothing but the bitterest pain, and whose enthusiasm for the beautiful (at least inspiring) threatens to vanish; and ask yourself, is he not a wretched, unhappy man?"
— from Letter to Leopold Kupelwieser, 1824
"Oh, imagination! Thou greatest treasure of man, thou inexhaustible fount of all art and science! How many friends have I gained through thee, how many enemies hast thou made for me!"
— from Diary entry, 1816
"Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken."
— from Letter, 1826
All quotes by Franz Schubert (370)
I finish one song only to begin another.
What would life be without the hope of something beyond?
I feel myself the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world. Imagine a man whose health will never be right again...
My productions exist through my understanding of music and through my sorrows; those which grief alone has produced seem to please the world the least.
The string quartet is the most intimate conversation among friends.
I live only in my melodies and in the writing of my operas.
Beauty is difficult.
The lied is the child of feeling and of immediate inspiration.
I am incapable of writing anything that is not from the heart.
In the end, time will tell what is truly lasting.
Contemporaries of Franz Schubert
Other Musics born within 50 years of Franz Schubert (1797–1828).