Truth is a great flirt.

It is my fervent wish and my greatest ambition to leave a work with a few useful instructions for the pianists after me.

A good Cuban cigar closes the doors to the vulgarities of the world.

Supreme serenity still remains the Ideal of great Art. The shapes and transitory forms of life are but stages toward this Ideal, which Christ's religion illuminates with His divine light.

I carry a deep sadness of the heart which must now and then break out in sound.

Truth is a great flirt.

My mind and fingers have worked like the damned. Homer, the Bible, Plato, Locke, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Beethoven, Bach, Hummel, Mozart, Weber are all around me. I study them. I devour them with fury.