England is so surrounded by the boredom of conventionalities, that it is all one to them whether music is good or bad, since they have to hear it from morning till night. For here they have flower-shows with music, dinners with music, sales with music.

I haven't heard anything so great for a long time; Beethoven snaps his fingers at the whole world.

I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness, but I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them.

As long as I have health and strength, I will gladly work all my days.

If the newspapers cut me up so much that I shall not venture before the world again, I have resolved to become a house painter; that would be as easy as anything else, and I should, at any rate, still be an artist!

After a rest in Edinburgh, where, passing a music-shop, I heard some blind man playing a mazurka of mine.

They want me to give another concert but I have no desire to do so. You cannot imagine what a torture the three days before a public appearance are to me.