There is nothing boring in life except ourselves.

Never forget that your days are blessed. You may know how to profit by them, or you may not, but they are blesses.

Do not take up music unless you would rather die than not do so.

Music was not invented by the composer, but found.

You should never listen to someone practice. That is their work and theirs alone.

The great conductor is always a despot by temperament and intractable in his ways. ... The artist is obliged to keep his laughter and tears to himself. If they want to emerge, in spite of himself, then he must hide them or unleash them in someone else.

The history of harmony is the history of the development of the human ear, which has gradually assimilated, in their natural order, the successive intervals of the harmonic series.