Art is not emotion. Art is the medium in which emotion is expressed..

It is nothing to succeed if one has not taken great trouble, and it is nothing to fail if one has done the best one could..

It is so much easier to rest contented with what we have already acquired than to change ever so slightly those routine but profound habits of though….

There is nothing boring in life except ourselves..

Great art likes chains. The greatest artists have created art within bounds. Or else they have created their own chains..

Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece..

Do not take up music unless you would rather die than not do so..

It is one thing to be gifted and quite another thing to be worthy of one's own gift..

[On being asked how it felt to be the first female conductor of the Boston Symphony:] I've been a woman for a little more than fifty years, and I've ….

To study music, we must learn the rules. To create music, we must break them..

Music was not invented by the composer, but found..

Loving a child doesn't mean giving in to all his whims; to love him is to bring out the best in him, to teach him to love what is difficult..

The essential conditions of everything you do must be choice, love, passion..

Do nothing for effect. Do it for truth..

False notes can be forgiven, false music cannot..

I've been a woman for a little over 50 years and have gotten over my initial astonishment. As for conducting an orchestra, that's a job where I don't….

As far as the execution is concerned ... the most frequent and most serious mistake is to follow the music instead of preceding it..

Without a strong cup to carry the emotion, it is only a curiosity. Great art can come to us only in strong cups. Without emotion, there is nothing to….

Words created divergencies between beings, because their precise meanings put an opinion around the idea. Music only retains the highest and purest s….

Nothing is better than music; when it takes us out of time, it has done more for us than we have the right to hope for: it has broadened the limits o….

Without discipline, there can be no freedom..