Source: Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist (2002), Ch. 1 Body and Mind
“Wagner's music is better than it sounds.”
Actually by Bill Nye, possibly confused due to Nye quoting Twain in More Tramps Abroad, 1897. (See also autobiography, vol. 1, p. 288.)
Misattributed
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Mark Twain 637
American author and humorist 1835–1910Related quotes

“The late Bill Nye once said "I have been told that Wagner's music is better than it sounds."”
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010), p. 288

“The peculiar characteristic of classical music is that it is really better than it sounds.”
A stand-up line quoted in 1888.
Attributed
Variant: Wagner's music is better than it sounds (attested in an obituary; see The Quote Verifier)

To Leon Goldensohn, February 12, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

SPIEGEL Interview with Daniel Barenboim

1900s, Address at the Prize Day Exercises at Groton School (1904)
Context: Remember that in life, and above all in the very active, practical, workaday life on this continent, the man who wins out must be the man who works. He can not play all the time. He can not have play as his principal occupation and win out. Let him play; let him have as good a time as he can have. I have a pity that is akin to contempt for the man who does not have as good a time as he can out of life. But let him work. Let him count in the world. When he comes to the end of his life let him feel he has pulled his weight and a little more. A sound body is good; a sound mind is better; but a strong and clean character is better than either.
'Jorge Luis Borges', p. 65
Essays and reviews, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time (2007)