Rome is an astonishment!

Humankind above all is lazy.

There is no phase of the Italian mind that has not found expression in its music.

a true gentleman ... was characterized as the man that asks the fewest questions. This trait of refined society might be adopted into home-like in a far greater degree than it is, and make it far more agreeable.

Where painting is weakest, namely, in the expression of the highest moral and spiritual ideas, there music is sublimely strong.

Friends are discovered rather than made; there are people who are in their own nature friends, only they don't know each other; but certain things, like poetry, music, and paintings are like the Freemason's sign, they reveal the initiated to each other.

So subtle is the atmosphere of opinion that it will make itself felt without words.