A bad conscience is easier to cope with than a bad reputation.

Our writing equipment takes part in forming our thoughts.

Every virtue inclines to stupidity, every stupidity to virtue; "stupid to the point of sanctity," they say in Russia, - let us be careful lest out of pure honesty we eventually become saints and bores!

If you look long enough into the void, the void begins to look back through you.

The existence of forgetting has never been proved: We only know that some things don't come to mind when we want them.

In Bach there is still too much crude Christianity, crude Germanism, crude scholasticism; he stands on the threshold of European (modern) music, but he looks back from there to the Middle Ages.

Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.