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

Music expresses first of all sadness rather than joy.

It is not from choice that my life is music and nothing more, but when one is an artist what else can he be? When a whole lifetime is too short to attain the heights he wants to reach, how then can he devote any of the little time he has to things outside of his art?

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.

Just as surely as every new language mastered opens up a new world, so knowledge of a Beethoven, a Chopin, or a Schumann opens up a new world in spiritual beauty and thought.

Man is naturally lazy, therefore he invents labor-saving devices.

The Pole listening to Chopin listens to the voice of his whole race.