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.
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.
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.
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
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.
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.
Joy is not in things; it is in us.
Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour.
No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.
A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.
If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted, I beg his pardon.
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.
Inspire and bring joy to all those you touch.
To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist.
Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.
Life is a lot like jazz... it's best when you improvise.
For the past ten years I have had no financial problems.
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.
When I was young, I was told: 'You'll see, when you're fifty.
' I am fifty and I haven't seen a thing.
Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.
Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.
I want to do nothing chic, I want to have ideas before beginning a piece.
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.
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry.
I tell my piano the things I used to tell you.
The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.
People come to music to seek oblivion: is that not also a form of deception?
I worked hard. Anyone who works as hard as I did can achieve the same results.
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.
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.
Never look at the trombones; it only encourages them.
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.
Only the pure in heart can make a good soup.
The end of all good music is to affect the soul.
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.
I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
Where there is devotional music, God is always at hand with His gracious presence.