If experiments on animals were abandoned on grounds of compassion, mankind would have made a fundamental advance.

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.

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

We must learn to die, and to die in the fullest sense of the word. The fear of the end is the source of all lovelessness

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.

I know nothing at all about music.

The oldest, truest, most beautiful organ of music, the origin to which alone our music owes its being, is the human voice.