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Creativity Quote by Pablo Casals

"I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance"

About this Quote

Casals isn’t romanticizing “caring” as a soft virtue; he’s treating it as a muscle that makes meaning possible. The phrase “capacity to care” matters: capacity suggests training, endurance, a choice you keep making, not a mood you stumble into. Coming from a musician who spent a lifetime disciplining feeling into form, it reads like an artist’s manifesto: significance isn’t found, it’s practiced.

There’s quiet defiance in the wording. Casals lived through the collapse of old Europe, the Spanish Civil War, and Franco’s dictatorship; he famously refused to perform in countries that recognized Franco’s regime. In that context, “care” is not private sentiment but moral attention, a refusal to let cruelty become normal. He’s smuggling an ethics lesson into a humanist line: your life deepens in proportion to what you’re willing to be affected by, and what you’re willing to risk for that affect.

The subtext also pushes back against virtuosity-as-meaning. Casals was revered for his Bach interpretations, yet he implies technique alone can’t justify a life. Art, politics, relationships: all of it is hollow without the ability to be moved by another person’s reality. “Deepest significance” lands with a musician’s ear for resonance; it’s the low note under the melody, the thing you feel in your chest. In an era that rewards detachment and irony as sophistication, Casals makes a bracing claim: numbness is not neutrality, it’s a kind of spiritual poverty.

Quote Details

TopicMeaning of Life
SourceAttributed to Pablo Casals; quoted on Wikiquote (Pablo Casals) as "The capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance." No primary-source citation given on the Wikiquote entry.
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Casals, Pablo. (n.d.). I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-feel-the-capacity-to-care-is-the-thing-which-108692/

Chicago Style
Casals, Pablo. "I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance." FixQuotes. Accessed February 3, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-feel-the-capacity-to-care-is-the-thing-which-108692/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-feel-the-capacity-to-care-is-the-thing-which-108692/. Accessed 3 Feb. 2026.

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Pablo Casals: The capacity to care gives life meaning
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About the Author

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Pablo Casals (December 29, 1876 - October 22, 1973) was a Musician from Spain.

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