The political is not compatible with the artistic, because the former, in order to prove, has to be one-sided.

Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself.

I looked more widely around me, I studied the lives of the masses of humanity, and I saw that, not two or three, or ten, but hundreds, thousands, millions, had so understood the meaning of life that they were able both to live and to die. All these people were well acquainted with the meaning of life and death, quietly labored, endured privation and suffering, lived and died, and saw in all this, not a vain, but a good thing.

Music makes me forget myself, my true condition, it carries me off into another state of being, one that isn't my own.

Anything is better than lies and deceit!

It is not enough to be a hardworking person. Think: what do you work at?

I have discovered nothing new; I have only perceived what I already knew.