In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin.

It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.

As a general rule, the longer a man's fame is likely to last, the later it will be in coming; for all excellent products require time for their development.

The inexpressible depth of music, so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from its pain… Music expresses only the quintessence of life and its events, never these themselves.

Consciousness makes the individual careful to maintain his own existence; and if this were not so, there would be no surety for the preservation of the species. From all this it is clear that individuality is not a form of perfection, but rather a limitation; and so to be freed from it is not loss but gain.

It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them.

Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.