The whole duty of a conductor is comprised in his ability to indicate the right tempo.

Blessed be, the genius who never knew good fortune! Genius in itself already means so much; what meaning does luck still hold for him?

True drama can be conceived only as resulting from the collective impulse of all the arts to communicate in the most immediate way with a collective public... Thus especially the art of tone, developed with such singular diversity in instrumental music, will realize in the collective artwork its richest potential -- will indeed incite the pantomimic art of dancing in turn to wholly new discoveries and inspire the breath of poetry no less to an undreamed-of fullness. For in its isolation music has formed itself an organ capable of the most immeasurable expression - the orchestra.

When religion becomes artificial, art has a duty to rescue it. Art can show that the symbols which religions would have us believe literally true are actually figurative. Art can idealize those symbols, and so reveal the profound truths they contain.

The essence of higher instrumental music lays herein that one is able to express in tones that what one is unable to say in words.

Those who grasp the whole, will also comprehend all parts of that whole, even when immediate technical understanding is lacking, and recognize and marshal these.

Human dignity begins to assert itself only at the point where man is distinguishable from the beast by pity for it.