Music was not invented by the composer, but found.

[On the music of Richard Strauss:] Too many notes!

A great work is made out of a combination of obedience and liberty.

Great art likes chains. The greatest artists have created art within bounds. Or else they have created their own chains.

Nothing is better than music; when it takes us out of time, it has done more for us than we have the right to hope for: it has broadened the limits of our sorrowful life, it has lit up the sweetness of our hours of happiness by effacing the pettinesses that diminish us, bringing us back pure and new to what was, what will be, what music has created for us.

Nothing is better than music; when it takes us out of time, it has done more for us than we have the right to hope for.

It is so much easier to rest contented with what we have already acquired than to change ever so slightly those routine but profound habits of thought and feeling which govern our life, and by which we live so blissfully. This mental inertia is, perhaps, our greatest enemy. Insidiously it leads us to assume that we can renew our lives without renewing our habits.