The pioneers and missionaries of religion have been the real cause of more trouble and war than all other classes of mankind.

Imperceptibly the love of these discords grew upon me as my love of music grew stronger.

That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.

In beauty of face no maiden ever equaled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream - an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the fantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos.

Yet, mad am I not — and very surely do I not dream.

If in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul.

I have made no money. I am as poor now as ever I was in my life - except in hope, which is by no means bankable.