28 Quotes by Hector Berlioz

The luck of having talent is not enough; one must also have a talent for luck.

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

The trombone is the true head of the family of wind instruments... it has all the serious and powerful tones of sublime musical poetry, from religious, calm and imposing accents to savage, orgiastic outburst.

Heine commenting on the music of Louis Hector Berlioz: He is an immense nightingale, a lark as great as an eagle. . . . The music causes me to dream of fabulous empires, filled with fabulous sins.

It is not enough that the artist should be well prepared for the public. The public must be well prepared for what it is going to hear.

If men of genius only knew what love their works inspire!

A feeble mind, conscious of its own feebleness, grows feeble under that very consciousness. As soon as the power of fear becomes known to it, there follows the fear of fear, and, on the first perturbation, reason abandons it.

Bach is Bach just as God is God.

Only by pairing knowledge with inspiration will art evolve. Without these conditions any musician will remain a flawed artist, if one may speak of an artist at all.