Belief in form, but disbelief in content - that's what makes an aphorism charming.

For our self respect depends upon our ability to make requital, for good or for evil.

To produce music is also in a sense to produce children.

Annoyance is a physical malady that is in no way cured just because the annoying situation that causes it is eliminated.

... hitherto we have been permitted to seek beauty only in the morally good - a fact which sufficiently accounts for our having found so little of it and having had to seek about for imaginary beauties without backbone! - As surely as the wicked enjoy a hundred kinds of happiness of which the virtuous have no inkling, so too they possess a hundred kinds of beauty; and many of them have not yet been discovered.

A refined nature is vexed by knowing that some one owes it thanks, a coarse nature by knowing that it owes thanks to some one.

What I really want from Music: That it be cheerful and profound like an afternoon in October.