Beginnings play their prized part in every finished human accomplishment, for beginnings mean the birth of added progress.

I established a certain standard of behavior, that, during my playing, there must be no talking.

I am nothing! If you could know the dream of what I would like to be, you would realize how little I have accomplished.

A man is not necessarily a master because he happened to compose two or three centuries ago. Let us beware of the worship of mere antiquity.

Every new generation in its hour of dawn, filled with the dreams of youth, its thirsts, intoxications and enthusiasms, thinks itself called upon to impel humanity towards heights unmeasured, believes itself an appointed pathfinder, a thinker of thoughts, a doer of deeds greater than any of those which came before. Every new generation desires beauty, but a beauty all its own.

I loved your country [America] before I knew it.

Times change, people change, thought and feeling take new shapes, put on fresh garments, sons bow their heads unwillingly to that which enraptured their fathers.