How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.

Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind.

Nothing primes inspiration more than necessity.

The language of music is common to all generations and nations; it is understood by everybody, since it is understood with the heart.

Music is a kind of harmonious language.

Eating, loving, singing, and digesting are, in truth, the four acts of the comic opera known as life, and they pass like bubbles of a bottle of champagne. Whoever lets them break without having enjoyed them is a complete fool.

Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour.