Is it life, I ask, is it even prudence, To bore thyself and bore the students?

We are not all equal, nor can we be so.

To be active is the primary vocation of man.

I examine my own being, and find there a world, but a world rather of imagination and dim desires, than of distinctness and living power. Then everything swims before my senses, and I smile and dream while pursuing my way through the world.

The misery that oppresses you lies not in your profession but in yourself! What man in the world would not find his situation intolerable if he chooses a craft, an art, indeed any form of life, without experiencing an inner calling? Whoever is born with a talent, or to a talent, must surely find in that the most pleasing of occupations! Everything on this earth has its difficult sides! Only some inner drive - pleasure, love - can help us overcome obstacles, prepare a path, and lift as out of the narrow circle in which others tread out their anguished, miserable existences!

A man may twist as he pleases, and do what he pleases, but he inevitably comes back to the track to which nature has destined him.

The effects of good music are not just because it's new; on the contrary music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it.