Has anyone...any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age understood by the word inspiration? ... There is an ecstasy such that the immese strain of it is sometimes relaxed by a flood of tears, along with which one's steps either rush or involuntarily lag, alternately. There is the feeling that one is completely out of hand, with the very distinct consciousness of an endless number of fine thrills and quiverings to the very toes... Everything happens quite involuntarily, as if in a tempestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of power and divinity.

The bite of conscience is indecent.

There is no pre-established harmony between the furtherance of truth and the well-being of mankind.

One is healthy when one can laugh at the earnestness and zeal with which one has been hypnotized by any single detail of one's life.

There are few pains so grievous as to have seen, divined, or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and deteriorated

Every achievement, every step forward in knowledge, is the consequence of courage, of toughness towards oneself, of sincerity to oneself

Life without music is only error, exhaustion, exile... Indeed, there is nothing that concerns me more than the fate of music.