You must always believe that life is as extraordinary as music says it is.

Submission to poverty is the unpardonable sin against the body. Submission to unhappiness is the unpardonable sin against the spirit.

The childhood of the individual and the race is full of fears, and panic-stricken attempts to avert what is feared by placating the gods with painful sacrifices.

Art is not a plaything, but a necessity, and its essence, form, is not a decorative adjustment, but a cup into which life can be poured and lifted to the lips and be tasted.

It is a great pity that every human being does not, at an early stage of his life, have to write a historical work. He would then realize that the human race is in quite a jam about truth.

The memory, experiencing and re-experiencing, has such power over one's mere personal life, that one has merely lived.

In England and America a beard usually means that its owner would rather be considered venerable than virile; on the continent of Europe it often means that its owner makes a special claim to virility.