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.
Richard WagnerWhen 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.
Richard WagnerWhat Music expresses is eternal, infinite, and ideal; she expresses not the passion, love, desire, of this or that individual in this or that condition, but Passion, Love, Desire itself, and in such infinitely varied phases as lie in her unique possession and are foreign and unknown to any other tongue...So...Here's to Victory, gained by our higher sense over the worthlessness of the vulgar! To Love, which crowns our courage...To the day, to the night!...And three cheers for Music.
Richard WagnerHuman dignity begins to assert itself only at the point where man is distinguishable from the beast by pity for it.
Richard Wagner