My mother was kept very busy with her sewing; sometimes she would have another woman helping her.

Nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best he gives to the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of his genius.

My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am, and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought, that after all I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage

I'm lonely I'll make me a world.

As I look back now I can see that I was a perfect little aristocrat.

I had enjoyed life in Paris, and, taking all things into consideration, enjoyed it wholesomely.

Young man, young man, your arm's too short to box with God.