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.

If you are convinced of a matter, you must take sides or you don't deserve to succeed.

Rash, inexperienced youth holds itself a chosen instrument, and allows itself unbounded license.

To know of someone here and there whom we accord with, who is living on with us, even in silence - - this makes our earthly ball a peopled garden.

The finished man, you know, is difficult to please; a growing mind will ever show you gratitude. --Faust 1, lines 182-3

You don't love if you don't take the beloved's faults for virtues.

In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm... in the real world all rests on perseverance.