Untitled

Genius is what makes us forget the master's talent.

Genius is what makes us forget skill.

Where genius wears thin skill may show through.

Genius is what prevents us from seeing the master's talent.

Only where genius wears thin can you see the talent.

If white turns into black some people say "Essentially it is still the same". And others, if the color becomes one degree darker, say "It has changed completely"

Put a man in the wrong atmosphere and nothing will function as it should. He will seem unhealthy in every part. Put him back into his proper element and everything will blossom and look healthy. But if he is not in his right element, what then? Well, then he just has to make the best of appearing before the world as a cripple.

Virtually in the same way as there is a difference between deep and shallow sleep, there are thoughts which occur deep down and thoughts which bustle about on the surface.

Counterpoint might present an extraordinarily difficult problem for a composer; the problem namely: what attitude should I, given my propensities, adopt to counterpoint? He may have hit upon a conventionally acceptable attitude and yet still feel that it is not properly his. That it is not clear what counterpoint ought to mean to him. (I was thinking of Schubert in this connection; of his wanting to take lessons in counterpoint right at the end of his life. I think his aim may have been not so much just learning more counterpoint as determining where he stood in relation to it.)

Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.

One might say: "Genius is talent exercised with courage."

A teacher may get good, even astounding, results from his pupils while he is teaching them and yet not be a good teacher; because it may be that, while his pupils are directly under his influence, he raises them to a height which is not natural to them, without fostering their own capacities for work at this level, so that they immediately decline again as soon as the teacher leaves the classroom. Perhaps this is how it is with me; I have sometimes thought so. (When Mahler himself conducted his students in training sessions he obtained excellent performances; the orchestra seemed to deteriorate at once when he was not conducting it himself.)

The insidious thing about the causal point of view is that it leads us to say: "Of course, it had to happen like that." Whereas we ought to think: it may have happened like that -- and also in many other ways.

People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc. to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them -- that does not occur to them.

I believe that my originality (if that is the right word) is an originality belonging to the soil rather than to the seed. (Perhaps I have no seed of my own.) Sow a seed in my soil and it will grow differently than it would in any other soil.

Freud's originality too was like this, I think. I have always believed -- without knowing why -- that the real germ of psycho-analysis came from Breuer, not Freud. Of course Breuer's seed-grain can only have been quite tiny. Courage is always original.

Resting on your laurels is as dangerous as resting when you are walking in the snow. You doze off and die in your sleep.

No one can speak the truth; if he has still not mastered himself. He cannot speak it; -- but not because he is not clever enough yet.

The truth can be spoken only by someone who is already at home in it; not by someone who still lives in falsehood and reaches out from falsehood towards truth on just one occasion.

Why is the soul moved by idle thoughts? -- After all they are idle. Well, it is moved by them.

(How can the wind move the tree when it's nothing but air? Well, it does move it; and don't forget it.)

Envy is a superficial thing -- i.e.: the color characteristic of envy does not go down deep -- further down passion has a different color. (That, of course, does not make envy any the less real.)

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

Ideas too sometimes fall from the tree before they are ripe.