Elbert Hubbard

“ Art is born of heart, not head; and so it seems to me that the work of these men whose names I have somewhat arbitrarily linked, will live. Each sowed in sorrow and reaped in grief. They were tender, kind, gentle, with a capacity for love that passes the love of woman. They were each indifferent to the proprieties, very much as children are. They lived in cloister-like retirement, hidden from the public gaze, or wandered unnoticed and unknown. They founded no schools, delivered no public addresses, and in their own day made small impress on the times. ”

“ The delicate nuances of Chopin's music have never been equaled by another composer; every note is cryptic, every sound a symbol. And yet it is dance-music, too, but still it tells its story of baffled hope and stifled desire—the tragedy of Poland in sweet sounds.
Stephen Crane was an artist in his ability to convey the feeling by just the right word, or a word misplaced, like a lady's dress in disarray, or a hat askew. This daring quality marks everything he wrote. The recognition that language is fluid, and at best only an expedient, flavors all his work. ”

“ Most descriptions of women begin by telling how the individual looked and what she wore. No pen-portraits of Clara Schumann have come down to us, for the reason that she was too great, too elusive in spirit, for any snapshot artist to attempt her. She never looked twice the same. In feature she was commonplace, her form lacked the classic touch, and her raiment was as plain as the plumage of a brown thrush in an autumn hedgerow. She was as homely as George Eliot, Mary Wollstonecraft, Rosa Bonheur, George Sand, or Madame De Stael. ”

“ I think I would rather have had Mozart for a friend than to love and be loved by the greatest prima donna who ever warbled in high C. Friendship is better than love. Friendship means calm, sweet sleep, clear brain and a strong hold on sanity. Love I am told is only friendship, plus something else. But that something else is a great disturber of the peace, not to say digestion. It sometimes racks the brain until the world reels. Love is such a tax on the emotions that this way madness lies. ”

“ Often for six months they would not meet, he doing his work in his own way, she doing hers, but each ever conscious of the life and love of the other—feeding on the ideal—writing or not writing, but glorying in each other's triumphs—lives linked first by the love of a third person, cemented by dire calamity, and then fused by a oneness of hope and aspiration.
Brahms' nature was too decidedly masculine, that is to say, one-sided, to exist without the love of woman; Clara Schumann, gentle, generous, motherly, plastic, needed Johannes no less than he needed her. ”

“ Felix Mendelssohn was the culminating flower of a long line of exquisite culture. He was an orchid that does not reproduce itself. With him died the race. All that beauty of soul, vivacity, candor and sparkling gaiety, with the nerved-up capacity for work, were but the flaring up of life ere it goes out in the night of death. Such men never found either a race or a school. They are the comets that dash across the plane of our vision, obeying no orbit, leaving behind only a memory of blinding light. ”

“ In point of temperament and disposition Bach bears a closer resemblance to Michelangelo than to either of the others whose names I have mentioned. He was stern, strong, self-contained, and so deeply religious that he was not only a Christian but a good deal of a pagan as well. A homely man was Bach—quiet, simple in tastes and blunt in speech.
The earnest way in which this plain, unpretentious man focused upon his life-work and raised organ-music to the highest point of art must command the sincere admiration of every lover of honest endeavor. ”

“ In Mendelssohn's music we get no sense of Titanic power such as we feel when "Wagner" is being played; no world problems vex us. The delicate, plaintive, spiritual seductions of Chopin, who swept the keys with an insinuating gossamer touch, are not there. The brilliant extravaganzas of Liszt—passages illumined by living lightning—are wholly wanting. But in it all you feel the deep, measured pulse of a religious conviction that never halts nor doubts. There are grace, ease, beauty, sweetness and exquisite harmony everywhere. ”

“ And then there is always a doubt about the genius—isn't he only a fool after all!
Art was Beethoven's solace. Art is harmony, beauty and excellence. The province of art is to impart a sublime emotion. Beethoven's heart was filled with divine love—and all love is divine—and through his art he sought to express his love to others.
But his physical calamity made him the butt and byword of the heedless wherever he went. Within the sealed-up casements of his soul Beethoven heard the Heavenly Choir ”

“ Even Joachim, whom I think divine, never moved me. When Liszt plays anything pathetic, it sounds as if he had been through everything, and opens all one's wounds afresh. All that one has ever suffered comes before one again. Who was it that I heard say once, that years ago he saw Clara Schumann sitting in tears near the platform during one of Liszt's performances? Liszt knows well the influence he has on people, for he always fixes his eyes on some one of us when he plays, and I believe he tries to wring our hearts. ”

“ Man is the instrument of Deity—through man does Deity create. And the artist is one who expresses for others their best thoughts and feelings. He may arouse in men emotions that were dormant, and so were unguessed; but under the spell of the artist-spirit, these dormant faculties are awakened from lethargy—they are exercised, and once the thrill of life is felt through them, they will probably be exercised again and again.
All art is collaboration between the performer and the partaker—music is especially a collaboration. ”

“ The great books are those the authors had to write to get rid of; the only immortal songs are those sung because the singers could not help it. The best-loved wife is the woman who married because her lover had to marry her to get rid of her; the children that are born because they had to be are the ones that stock the race; and the love that can not help itself is the only love that uplifts and inspires.
Felix Mendelssohn, the slight, joyous, girlish youth, should have preserved his Cecilia-like virginity. He should have left marriage to those who were capable of nothing else ”

“ Love has its advantages, of course, and the benefits of passionate love consist in scarifying one's sensibilities until they are raw, thus making one able to sympathize with those who suffer. Love sounds the feelings with a leaden plummet that sinks to the very depths of one's soul. This once done the emotions can return with ease, and so this is why no singer can sing, or painter paint, or sculptor model, or writer write, until love or calamity, often the same thing, has sounded the depths of his soul. ”

“ There is a carpet on the floor, a rarity in Germany, and Liszt generally walks about and smokes and mutters, and calls upon one or the other of us to play. From time to time he will sit down and himself play where a passage does not suit him, and when he is in good spirits he makes little jests all the time. His playing was a complete revelation to me, and has given me an entirely new insight into music. You can not conceive, without hearing him, how poetic he is, or the thousand nuances that he can throw into the simplest thing, and he is equally great on all sides. ”