My destiny is solitude, and my life is work.

For once you are going to hear a dream, a dream that I have made sound... I dreamed all this; never could my poor head have invented such a thing.

You know my faithfulness to you, never can another own my heart, never - never - never...

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

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 immoral profession of musical criticism must be abolished.

It is impossible to communicate with Schumann. The man is hopeless; he doesn't talk at all.