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

Of all composers, past and present, I am the least learned. I mean that in all seriousness, and by learning I do not mean knowledge of music.

Our mistake, you see, was to write interminable large operas, which had to fill an entire evening. And now along comes someone with a one or two-act opera without all that pompous nonsense - that was a happy reform.

The artist must yield himself to his own inspiration... I should compose with utter confidence a subject that set my musical blood going, even though it were condemned by all other artists as anti-musical.

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.

Stupid criticism and still more stupid praise.