For a tree to become tall it must grow tough roots among the rocks.

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.

The hypocrite who always plays one and the same part ceases at last to be a hypocrite.

Against war it may be said that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished revengeful.

Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature

Love forgives the lover even his lust.

He has drawn back, only in order to have enough room for his leap