A person of any mental quality has ideas of his own. This is common sense.

Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought, as it is forced in most arts and especially in the art of words.

For the virtuoso, musical works are in fact nothing but tragic and moving materializations of his emotions; he is called upon to make them speak, weep, sing and sigh, to recreate them in accordance with his own consciousness. In this way he, like the composer, is a creator, for he must have within himself those passions that he wishes to bring so intensely to life.

It is impossible to imagine a more complete fusion with nature than that of the Gypsy.

I did not compose my work as one might put on a church vestment... rather it sprung from the truly fervent faith of my heart, such as I have felt it since my childhood.

In life one must decide whether to conjugate the verb to have or the verb to be.

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.