A phenomenon like Mozart remains an inexplicable thing.

We should treat children as God does us, who makes us happiest when He leaves us under the influence of innocent delusions.

I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wants.

There are but few who have ideas and are, at the same time, capable of action. Ideas enlarge but stymie, action enlivens but confines.

Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth.

No sacred fane requires us to submit to insult.

Since I have heard often enough that everyone in the end has his own religion, nothing seemed more natural to me than to fashion my own.