Hector Berlioz Quotes

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ...

You request me to tell you…if it is true that the creed of all who profess to love high and serious art is: "There is no God but Bach, and Mendelssohn is his prophet"?

La vie sert à faire des opéras-comiques.

Le temps est un grand professeur, mais malheureusement il tue ses élèves.

L'auteur de ce Prophète a non seulement le bonheur d'avoir du talent, mais aussi le talent d'avoir du bonheur.

Pauvres diables!... D'où sortent ces malheureux êtres ?... À quel Montfaucon vont-ils mourir ?... Que leur octroie la munificence municipale pour nettoyer (ou salir) ainsi le pavé de Paris ?... À quel âge les envoie-t-on à l'équarrissage ?... Que fait-on de leurs os ? (leur peau n'est bonne à rien.)

C'est la vraie voix féminine de l'orchestre, voix passionnée et chaste en même temps, déchirante et douce, qui pleure et crie et se lamente, ou chante et prie et rêve, ou éclate en accents joyeux, comme nulle autre pourrait le faire.

time is an excellent teacher - unfortunately it kills all its pupils

A singer who is able to sing even sixteen measures of good music in a natural and engaging way, effortlessly and in tune, without distending the phrase, without exaggerating accents to the point of caricature, without platitude, affectation, or coyness, without making grammatical mistakes, without illicit slurs, without hiatus or hiccup, without making insolent changes in the text, without barks or bleats, without sour notes, without crippling the rhythm, without absurd ornaments and nauseating appoggiaturas – in short, a singer able to sing these measures simply and exactly as the composer wrote them – is a rare, very rare, exceedingly rare bird.

"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its students."

[Letter, November 1856]

Se dice que el tiempo es un gran maestro; lo malo es que va matando a sus discípulos.

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.

Passionate subjects must be dealt with in cold blood.

...imagine anybody having lived forty-five or fifty years without knowing Hamlet! One might as well spend one's life in a coal mine.

Il faut collectionner les pierres qu'on vous jette. C'est le début d'un piédestal.