Never shall I forget the time I spent with you.
Please continue to be my friend, as you will always find me yours.
I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness.
Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears form the eyes of woman.
Tradition is not to preserve the ashes, but to pass on the fire.
Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.
Beware of missing chances; otherwise it may be altogether too late some day.
Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.
To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.
. . . colors like a flourish of trumpets or pianissimo on the violin, great, calm, oscillating, splintered surgances . . . . Is this not form?
Music is the space between the notes.
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.
The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.
Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven.
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
Art is the most beautiful of all lies.
It's not what your are, it's what you don't become that hurts.
Joy is not in things; it is in us
You may have the universe if I may have Italy.
Recommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience.
No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.
Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.
Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements.
A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.
Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.
There are two sides to every question: my side and the wrong side.
If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted, I beg his pardon.
Life is a lot like jazz... it's best when you improvise.
Never look at the trombones; it only encourages them.
To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist.
For the past ten years I have had no financial problems.
Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour.
Love forbids you not to love.
Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.
I want to do nothing chic, I want to have ideas before beginning a piece.
Joy is not in things; it is in us.
I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry.
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
I worked hard. Anyone who works as hard as I did can achieve the same results.
When I was young, I was told: 'You'll see, when you're fifty.
' I am fifty and I haven't seen a thing.
Music, because of its specific and far-reaching metaphorical powers, can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.
People come to music to seek oblivion: is that not also a form of deception?
I tell my piano the things I used to tell you.
Musical ideas sprang to my mind like a flight of butterflies, and all I had to do was to stretch out my hand to catch them.
When I wished to sing of love it turned to sorrow.
And when I wished to sing of sorrow it was transformed for me into love.
Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?
The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.
Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.
Where there is devotional music, God is always at hand with His gracious presence.
Inspire and bring joy to all those you touch.
Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome.
I love music passionately. And because I love it I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it.
Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light.
Every great inspiration is but an experiment.
I could compare my music to white light which contains all colours.
Only a prism can divide the colours and make them appear; this prism could be the spirit of the listener.
Pay no attention to what the critics say; no statue has ever been put up to a critic.
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.
A good composer does not imitate; he steals.
Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.