Ignacy Jan Paderewski Quotes

If I miss one day of practice, I notice it. If I miss two days, the critics notice it. If I miss three days, the audience notices it.

I owe my sucess in one per cent to my talent, in ten per cent to luck, and in ninety per cent to hard word. Work, work, and more work is the secret to success.

I cannot imagine a genuinely happy home without music in it.

You are a dear soul who plays polo, and I am a poor Pole who plays solo.

If I do not practice one day; I know it. If I do not practice the next, the orchestra knows it; if I do not practice the third day, the whole world knows it.

The culture of any country is gauged first by its progress in art.

Art without technique is invertebrate, shapeless, characterless.

When one is an artist, what else can he be?

The very essence of success is practice.

Man is naturally lazy, therefore he invents labor-saving devices.

The Pole listening to Chopin listens to the voice of his whole race.

Art is the expression of the immortal part of man.

Fatherland before everything, art afterward.

Piano playing is more difficult than statesmanship. It is harder to awake emotions in ivory keys than it is in human beings.

The genius is the man who has genuine and deep human relations with others, who does not cut himself off in the search for originality, but who realizes the value of artistic tradition.

I established a certain standard of behavior, that, during my playing, there must be no talking.

Music expresses first of all sadness rather than joy.

The ultimate necessity is the summoning of the mind and will to do their duty.

Art must be a slow and normal evolution.

Rhythm is the pulse of music.

Music is the only art that actually lives.

Chopin was an invalid, as you know, but his music was volcanic.

Change follows change in us, almost without transition; we pass from blissful rapture to sobbing woe; a single step divides our sublimest ecstasies from the darkest depth of spiritual despondency.

Intellectual isolation always follows commercial isolation.

Just as surely as every new language mastered opens up a new world, so knowledge of a Beethoven, a Chopin, or a Schumann opens up a new world in spiritual beauty and thought.

Beginnings play their prized part in every finished human accomplishment, for beginnings mean the birth of added progress.

There have been a few moments when I have known complete satisfaction, but only a few. I have rarely been free from the disturbing realization that my playing might have been better.

When I miss a week in practice, my audience knows it. When I miss a day, I know it.

I am inclined to believe that some music, like certain poetry, finds its appeal and way to all.

I loved your country [America] before I knew it.

The mere fact of knowing that a great audience waits on your labor is enough to shake all your nerves to pieces.

If I don't practise for one day, I know it; if I don't practise for two days, the critics knows it; if I don't practise for three days, the audience knows it.

A man is not necessarily a master because he happened to compose two or three centuries ago. Let us beware of the worship of mere antiquity.

I am nothing! If you could know the dream of what I would like to be, you would realize how little I have accomplished.

America, the country of my heart, my second home.

The great familiar musical works are always greeted by the audiences as ever welcome and beloved friends.

Times change, people change, thought and feeling take new shapes, put on fresh garments, sons bow their heads unwillingly to that which enraptured their fathers.

Art is great only when it bears the stamp of the individual.