I call a lie: wanting not to see something one does see, wanting not to see something as one sees it... The most common lie is the lie one tells to oneself; lying to others is relatively the exception.

Mozart, the last chord of a centuries-old great European taste.

Whenever the truth is uncovered, the artist will always cling with rapt gaze to what still remains covering even after such uncovering; but the theoretical man enjoys and finds satisfaction in the discarded covering and finds the highest object of his pleasure in the process of an ever happy uncovering that succeeds through his own efforts.

O my brothers, am I then cruel? But I say: that which is falling should also be pushed!

The end of a melody is not its goal; but nonetheless, if the melody had not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.

It's not the intensity of the man, but the duration of his intensity that makes the man great.

Our knowledge will take its revenge on us, just as ignorance exacted its revenge during the Middle Ages.