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.
Tradition is not to preserve the ashes, but to pass on the fire.
Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears form the eyes of woman.
Beware of missing chances; otherwise it may be altogether too late some day.
To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.
Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.
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.
It's not what your are, it's what you don't become that hurts.
Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven.
Art is the most beautiful of all lies.
No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.
Recommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience.
A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.
Joy is not in things; it is in us
There are two sides to every question: my side and the wrong side.
. . . colors like a flourish of trumpets or pianissimo on the violin, great, calm, oscillating, splintered surgances . . . . Is this not form?
Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.
Life is a lot like jazz... it's best when you improvise.
Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?
Music is mediator between spiritual and sensual life.
To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist.
Where there is devotional music, God is always at hand with His gracious presence.
Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome.
People come to music to seek oblivion: is that not also a form of deception?
Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light.
Music, because of its specific and far-reaching metaphorical powers, can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
For the past ten years I have had no financial problems.
If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted, I beg his pardon.
You may have the universe if I may have Italy.
I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry.
I worked hard. Anyone who works as hard as I did can achieve the same results.
A good composer does not imitate; he steals.
Imagination creates reality.
I love music passionately. And because I love it I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it.
I envy people who drink - at least they know what to blame everything on.
My music is best understood by children and animals.
Pay no attention to what the critics say; no statue has ever been put up to a critic.
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
Music is an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible delights of the soul.
Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time
Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.
Only the pure in heart can make a good soup.
Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.
Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour.
If I decide to be an idiot, then I'll be an idiot on my own accord.
