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

He who denies himself much in great matters will readily indulge himself in small things.

I feel all those human beings to be pernicious who can no longer oppose what they love: they thereby ruin the best things and people.

'God himself cannot exist without wise men' - Luther said, and was right. But 'God can exist even less without unwise men' - that good old Luther did not say.

It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is a privilege of the strong.

The most common sort of lie is the one uttered to one's self.

Mankind must work continually to produce individual great human beings - this and nothing else is the task... for the question is this : How can your life, the individual life, retain the highest value, the deepest significance? Only by living for the good of the rarest and most valuable specimens.