Life is fountain of joy; but where the rabble also gather to drink, all wells are poisoned.

...If I continued to harbour any hope for music it lay in the expectation that a musician might come who was sufficiently bold, subtle, malicious, southerly, superhealthy to confront that music and in an immortal fashion take revenge on it.

One thing a man must have: either a naturally light disposition or a disposition lightened by art and knowledge.

I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. the will to a system is a lack of integrity.

The most vulnerable and yet most unconquerable of things is human vanity; nay, through being wounded its strength increases and can grow to giant proportions.

Woman understands children better than man does, but man is more childlike than woman.

One should never know too precisely whom one has married