You learned people and artists have, no doubt, all sorts of superior things in your heads; but you're human beings like the rest of us, and we, too, have our dreams and fancies.

Only the ideas that we really live have any value.

I can think. I can wait. I can fast.

It is a pity that you students aren't fully aware of the luxury and abundance in which you live.

Despair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, justice and understanding, and to fulfill their requirements. Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side.

A game master or teacher who was primarily concerned with being close enough to the "innermost meaning" would be a very bad teacher. To be candid, I myself, for example, have never in my life said a word to my pupils about the "meaning" of music; if there is one it does not need my explanations. On the other hand I have always made a great point of having my pupils count their eighths and sixteenths nicely. Whatever you become, teacher, scholar, or musician, have respect for the "meaning" but do not imagine that it can be taught.

Art is contemplation of the world in a state of grace and imaginatively reflecting that subjective understanding.