Art should be independent of all clap-trap - should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism and the like. All these have no kind of concern with it; and that is why I insist on calling my works 'arrangements' and 'harmonies.

Work alone will efface the footsteps of work.

The explanation is quite simple. I wished to be near my mother.

People will forgive anything but beauty and talent. So I am doubly unpardonable.

I can't tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring.

The world is divided into two classes - invalids and nurses.

If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible.