Clara Schumann quotes:

I do not want horses or diamonds - I am happy in possessing you.

There is nothing greater than the joy of composing something oneself and then listening to it.

My imagination can picture no fairer happiness than to continue living for art.

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?

I cannot give a single concert at which I do not play one piece after the other in an agony of terror because my memory threatens to fail me. This fear torments me for days beforehand.

Why hurry over beautiful things? Why not linger and enjoy them?

Treasures are no longer to be got by instrumental 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.

Is an artist much more than a beggar?

The tea is ice-cold, the room grows colder and colder, but I grow warmer and warmer.

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 will yield to popular demands only insofar as they do not betray my own convictions.

If I have known much trouble in my youth, I have also known much joy.

He gives me the impression of being a spoilt child.(on Liszt)

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 cannot be so bad when everybody is so fond of me.

You appear in the Novelletten in every possible circumstance, in every irresistible form... They could only be written by one who knows such eyes as yours and has touched such lips as yours.