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.
. . . 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.
It's not what your are, it's what you don't become that hurts.
Art is the most beautiful of all lies.
Joy is not in things; it is in us
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.
A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.
There are two sides to every question: my side and the wrong side.
Life is a lot like jazz... it's best when you improvise.
To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist.
You may have the universe if I may have Italy.
Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.
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.
Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour.
Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.
I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry.
Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?
I want to do nothing chic, I want to have ideas before beginning a piece.
Love forbids you not to love.
Music is mediator between spiritual and sensual life.
Where there is devotional music, God is always at hand with His gracious presence.
When I was young, I was told: 'You'll see, when you're fifty.' I am fifty and I haven't seen a thing.
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.
Music, because of its specific and far-reaching metaphorical powers, can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.
Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome.
The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.
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.
Every great inspiration is but an experiment.
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.
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.
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
This new art made a deep impression on me, and I began to study it ardently.
I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
I worked hard. Anyone who works as hard as I did can achieve the same results.
A good composer does not imitate; he steals.
Competitions are for horse, not artist.
