Quotes by Richard Wagner

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The creator of the work of art of the future is none other than the artist of the present, the one who foresees the life of the future and longs to be incorporated into it. He who feeds this longing in himself from his most intimate aptitude, lives from now on in a better life; but only one being is capable of this: the artist.

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Man is a poet in two ways, by contemplation and by communication...

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The natural gift of poetry gives man the ability to condense the phenomena that manifest outside his senses into an inner image; the artistic one, on the other hand, to communicate this image again outside.

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The miracle in poetic works differs from the miracle in religious dogma in that it does not suspend the nature of things, as the latter does, but, on the contrary, makes them intelligible to feeling...

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For the impression produced by his message, the creative intelligence in the poem is not at all concerned with belief, but with affective understanding.

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Musical language is the beginning and end of spoken language, as feeling is the beginning and end of intellect, myth the beginning and end of history, Lyric the beginning and end of poetic art. The intermediate between the beginning and the center point, as well as between it the exit point is fantasy.

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The height of art is to make alive what is lifeless, to tame what is wild.