The great familiar musical works are always greeted by the audiences as ever welcome and beloved friends.

Change follows change in us, almost without transition; we pass from blissful rapture to sobbing woe; a single step divides our sublimest ecstasies from the darkest depth of spiritual despondency.

You are a dear soul who plays polo, and I am a poor Pole who plays solo.

Art without technique is invertebrate, shapeless, characterless.

If I don't practise for one day, I know it; if I don't practise for two days, the critics knows it; if I don't practise for three days, the audience knows it.

Fatherland before everything, art afterward.

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