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.
. . . colors like a flourish of trumpets or pianissimo on the violin, great, calm, oscillating, splintered surgances . . . . Is this not form?
To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.
Music is the space between the notes.
Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour.
Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven.
Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements.
The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.
Art is the most beautiful of all lies.
Joy is not in things; it is in us
You may have the universe if I may have Italy.
Joy is not in things; it is in us.
It's not what your are, it's what you don't become that hurts.
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.
Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.
If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted, I beg his pardon.
Inspire and bring joy to all those you touch.
There are two sides to every question: my side and the wrong side.
To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist.
Life is a lot like jazz... it's best when you improvise.
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.
For the past ten years I have had no financial problems.
I tell my piano the things I used to tell you.
I want to do nothing chic, I want to have ideas before beginning a piece.
If I were to agree to write the music for your beautiful poem, it would tie your poem up for some years as I have agreements and obligations which I must respect.
Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.
When I was young, I was told: 'You'll see, when you're fifty.
' I am fifty and I haven't seen a thing.
Love forbids you not to love.
I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry.
Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.
I worked hard. Anyone who works as hard as I did can achieve the same results.
The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.
People come to music to seek oblivion: is that not also a form of deception?
Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour.
Music, because of its specific and far-reaching metaphorical powers, can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.
Every great inspiration is but an experiment.
Never look at the trombones; it only encourages them.
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 haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
Pay no attention to what the critics say; no statue has ever been put up to a critic.
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?
Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.
Only the pure in heart can make a good soup.
The end of all good music is to affect the soul.