I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

If one plays good music, people don't listen and if one plays bad music people don't talk.

Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.

Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons.

An egg is always an adventure; the next one may be different.

Public Opinion... an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force.

After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own. Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one’s tears.