Music is never stationary; successive forms and styles are only like so many resting-places - like tents pitched and taken down again on the road to the Ideal.

My piano is to me what a ship is to the sailor, what a steed is to the Arab. It is the intimate personal depository of everything that stirred wildly in my brain during the most impassioned days of my youth. It was there that all my wishes, all my dreams, all my joys, and all my sorrows lay.

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.

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

The supreme harmony of the cosmos is selected in the harmony of the spirit.

We need improvement in the style of performance. There is no more advantage in a musician who plays and conducts than in one who is only a beater of rhythm.

The character of instrumental music... lets the emotions radiate and shine in their own character without presuming to display them as real or imaginary representations.