Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.

...a genuine work of art, can never be false, nor can it be discredited through the lapse of time, for it does not present an opinion but the thing itself.

Our civilized world is nothing but a great masquerade. You encounter knights, parsons, soldiers, doctors, lawyers, priests, philosophers and a thousand more: but they are not what they appear - they are merely masks... Usually, as I say, there is nothing but industrialists, businessmen and speculators concealed behind all these masks.

There is in the world only the choice between loneliness and vulgarity. All young people should be taught now to put up with loneliness ... because the less man is compelled to come into contact with others, the better off he is.

Money is human happiness in the abstract.

The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.

My body and my will are one.