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

There are eight girls in the house in which I am living, and practically all of them are good looking. You can realize that I am kept busy.

Why should the composer be more guilty than the poet who warms to fantasy by a strange flame, making an idea that inspires him the subject of his own very different treatment?

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

Approval or blame will follow in the world to come.

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

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