I don't know where there can be so many pianists as in Paris, so many asses and so many virtuosi.

Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.

Oh, how miserable it is to have no one to share your sorrows and joys, and, when your heart is heavy, to have no soul to whom you can pour out your woes.

My manuscripts sleep, while I cannot, for I am covered with poultices.

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.

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

My piano has not yet arrived. How did you send it? By Marseilles or by Perpignan? I dream music but I cannot make any because here there are not any pianos . . . in this respect this is a savage country.