I used to think that eighty was a very old age. Now I am ninety. I do not think this any more. As long as you are able to admire and to love, you are young.

We ought to think that we are one of the leaves of a tree, and the tree is all humanity. We cannot live without the others, without the tree.

I do not think a day passes in my life in which I fail to look with fresh amazement at the miracle of nature.

How could anybody think of Bach as 'cold' when these [cello] suites seem to shine with the most glittering kind of poetry," Casals said. "As I got on with the study I discovered a new world of space and beauty... the feelings I experienced were among the purest and most intense in my artistic life!

Real understanding does not come from what we learn in books; it comes from what we learn from love of nature, of music, of man. For only what is learned in that way is truly understood.

The cello is like a beautiful woman who has not grown older, but younger with time, more slender, more supple, more graceful.

To retire is the beginning of death.