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

I wish I could score everything for horns.

Music is the inarticulate speech of the heart, which cannot be compressed into words, because it is infinite.

Achievements, seldom credited to their source, are the result of unspeakable drudgery and worries.

The language of tones belongs equally to all mankind, and melody is the absolute language in which the musician speaks to every heart.

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.

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