Frédéric Chopin Quotes

I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness.

Messieurs, I should like to be granted the favour of performing at one of your admirable concerts, and this I beg to ask of you. Trusting, since I lack other qualifications to obtain this, in your goodwill towards artists, I dare to hope that you will greet my request favourably, I have the honour to be, Messieurs, your very humble servant.
Frédéric Chopin
Cité Bergère, No. 4

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...

Nothing is more beautiful than a good guitar, save perhaps two.

Regardless of my transient joys, I am never free of a feeling of melancholy which somehow forms the base of my heart.

You know how easily things grow out of nothing, when they pass through a mouth that smears them all over and makes something else out of them —

One can’t have everything in this world; be content with the greatest of joys: health.

how dismal it is to have no one to go to in the morning to share one’s griefs and joys; how hateful when something weighs on you and there’s nowhere to lay it down. You know to what I refer. I often tell to my pianoforte what I want to tell to you.

Bach é um astrônomo, descobrindo as estrelas mais maravilhosas. Beethoven desafia o universo. Eu apenas tento expressar a alma e o coração do homem.
Frédéric Chopin

Youth is an obligation; that is to say, you have an absolute duty to be happy and to preserve a good memory of yourself for one who loves you.

I'm glad that the secret is submerged in my heart, that in me is the end of what is for you the beginning. And be glad that you have in me an abyss into which you can cast everything without fear - as if into a second self - because your spirit has long lain there at the very bottom. I keep your letters like a ribbon from a mistress. I have the ribbon; write to me, I'll caress you again in a week.

It is dreadful when something weighs on your mind, not to have a soul to unburden yourself to. You know what I mean. I tell my piano the things I used to tell you.

My earthly body has been a terrible disappointment to me.

I could express my feelings more easily if they could be put into the notes of music, but as the very best concert would not cover my affection for you, dear daddy, I must use the simple words of my heart, to lay before you my utmost gratitude and filial affection

Translation 1: [...] I [...] have my own ideal, which I have served faithfully, though silently, for half a year; of which I dream, to thoughts of which the adagio of my concerto belongs, and which this morning inspired the little waltz I am sending you.