Play is a uniquely adaptive act, not subordinate to some other adaptive act, but with a special function of its own in human experience.

History can predict nothing except that great changes in human relationships will never come about in the form in which they have been anticipated.

One does not realize the historical sensation as a re-experiencing, but as an understanding that is closely related to the understanding of music, or rather of the world by means of music.

You only live a short time... and you are dead a long time.

The new knowledge has not yet settled in culture. It has not yet been integrated in a new cosmic conception.

We have to transpose ourselves into this impressionability of mind, into this sensitivity to tears and spiritual repentance, intothis susceptibility, before we can judge how colorful and intensive life was then.

But one sound always rose above the clamor of busy life and, no matter how much of a tintinnabulation, was never confused and, fora moment lifted everything into an ordered sphere: that of the bells.