Clara Schumann (1819-1896)
- There is nothing greater than the joy of composing something oneself and then listening to it.
- My health may be better preserved if I exert myself less, but in the end doesn’t each person give his life for his calling?
- My imagination can picture no fairer happiness than to continue living for art.
- I wish to lead a life free from care, and I see that I shall be unhappy if I cannot always work at my art.
- I cannot be so bad when everybody is so fond of me.
- How often have I actually discovered in myself that enthusiasm raises the artist above himself, how in an ordinary mood one would not have been able to accomplish many of the things for which enthusiasm lends one everything, energy, fire.
- I will yield to popular demands only insofar as they do not betray my own convictions.
- Composing gives me great pleasure… there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound.
- I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose — there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?