The art of music above all the other arts is the expression of the soul of a nation.

Wagner used to read the libretti of his operas to his friends; I am glad I was not there.

I suppose it never occurs to these people that a man might just want to write a piece of music.

The duty of the words is to say just as much as the music has left unsaid and no more.

A supreme composer can only come out of a musical nation.

The great men of music close periods; they do not inaugurate them. The pioneer work, the finding of new paths, is left to smaller men.

But in the next world I shan't be doing music, with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it.