Man is never always happy, and very often only a brief period of happiness is granted him in this world; so why escape from this dream which cannot last long?

Nothing is more beautiful than the sound of the guitar.

A strange adventure befell me while I was playing my Sonata in B flat minor before some English friends. I had played the Allegro and the Scherzo more or less correctly. I was about to attack the March when suddenly I saw arising from the body of my piano those cursed creatures which had appeared to me one lugubrious night at the Chartreuse. I had to leave for one instant to pull myself together after which I continued without saying anything.

To be a great composer requires immense experience... One acquires this by listening not only to other men's work, but above all to one's own!

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.

Liszt commenting on the music of Frédéric Chopin: He confided . . . those inexpressible sorrows to which the pious give vent in their communication with their Maker. What they never say except upon their knees, he said in his palpitating compositions.

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.