If only your pure and clean mind could touch me, dear Haydn, nobody has a greater reverence for you than I have.

I am composing like a god, as if it simply had to be done as it has been done.

The greatest misfortune of the wise man and the greatest unhappiness of the fool are based upon convention.

I want you for always...days, years, eternities.

It sometimes seems to me as if I do not belong to this world at all. I deplore music that engenders in people not love but madness: which rouses them to scornful laughter instead of lifting their thoughts to God.

There are two contrary impulses which govern this man's brain-the one sane, and the other eccentric. They alternate at regular intervals.

My compositions spring from my sorrows. Those that give the world the greatest delight were born of my deepest griefs.