A writer should never be brief at the expense of being clear.

Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.

You must treat a work of art like a great man: stand before it and wait patiently till it deigns to speak.

A man of talent will strive for money and reputation; but the spring that moves genius to the production of its works is not as easy to name

Most men are so thoroughly subjective that nothing really interests them but themselves.

The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.

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.