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

When one does a thing, it appears good, otherwise one would not write it. Only later comes reflection, and one discards or accepts the thing. Time is the best censor, and patience a most excellent teacher.

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!

I really don't know whether any place contains more pianists than Paris, or whether you can find more asses and virtuosos anywhere.

All the same it is being said everywhere that I played too softly, or rather, too delicately for people used to the piano-pounding of the artists here.

Here, whatever is not boring is not English.

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