One should never forget that by actually perfecting one piece one gains and learns more than by starting or half-finishing a dozen.

Those are miracles that no merely human brain can work. The artist is merely the sound conduct of a Force that dictates to him what he should do.

If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted, I beg his pardon.

For the shallow delights of matrimony and opera I have no courage.

It is a real pleasure to see music so bright and spontaneous expressed with corresponding ease and grace.

In him converge all previous streams of tendency, not as into a pool, stagnant, passive, motionless, but as a noble river that received its tributary waters and bearss them onward in larger and statelier volume.

How lucky is the man who, like Mozart and others, goes to the tavern of an evening and writes some fresh music. For he lives while he is creating.