I adore art...when I am alone with my notes, my heart pounds and the tears stream from my eyes, and my emotion and my joys are too much to bear.

The success of our operas rests most of the time in the hands of the conductor. This person is as necessary as a tenor or a prima donna.

Through care taken over trends, the desire to be novel and affectation knowledge, we repudiate our art, our instinct, our own way of doing things; it is absurd and stupid

I have striven for perfection, it has always eluded me, but I surely had an obligation to make one more try.

To copy the truth can be a good thing, but to invent the truth is better, much better.

I order that my funeral ceremonies be extremely modest, and that they take place at dawn or at the evening Ave Maria, without song or music.

Oh blessed a thousand times the peasant who is born, eats and dies without anybody bothering about his affairs.