Bach is like an astronomer who, with the help of ciphers, finds the most wonderful stars.

Bach is an astronomer, discovering the most marvellous stars. Beethoven challenges the universe. I only try to express the soul and the heart of man.

Sometimes I can only groan, and suffer, and pour out my despair at the piano.

Nothing is more odious than music without hidden meaning.

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?

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.

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.