Bel canto is to opera what pole-vaulting is to ballet.
The art of translation lies less in knowing the other language than in knowing your own.
To start writing about your life is, from one standpoint, to stop living it. You must avoid adventures today so as to make time for registering those of yesterday.
In music the present is extended.
Intelligence is silence, truth is being invisible. But what a racket I make in declaring this.
It's not evil that's ruining the earth, but mediocrity. The crime is not that Nero played while Rome burned, but that he played badly.