Claude Debussy Quotes & Sayings

“A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.”

“There is nothing is more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no more beautiful example of development in all that book which, alas, musicians read but too little - the book of Nature.”

“Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear. There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law.”

“Art is the most beautiful deception of all. And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing, sad as a factory.”

“People come to music to seek oblivion: is that not also a form of deception?”

“Music is the expression of the movement of the waters, the play of curves described by changing breezes.”

“Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.”

“The century of airplanes has a right to its own music.”

“Music is the silence between the notes.”

“Beauty must appeal to the senses, must provide us with immediate enjoyment, must impress us or insinuate itself into us without any effort on our part.”