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.

- Nadia Boulanger

Do nothing for effect. Do it for truth.

- Nadia Boulanger

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

- Nadia Boulanger

The art of music is so deep and profound that to approach it very seriously only is not enough. One must approach music with a serious rigor and, at …

- Nadia Boulanger

Without order there can be no inner satisfaction. Without inner satisfaction there can be no freedom. Without freedom there is no joy.

- Nadia Boulanger

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

- Nadia Boulanger

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

- Nadia Boulanger

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

- Nadia Boulanger

The history of harmony is the history of the development of the human ear, which has gradually assimilated, in their natural order, the successive in…

- Nadia Boulanger