Endeavour to play easy pieces well and with elegance; that is better than to play difficult pieces badly.

We may be sure that a genius like Mozart, were he born today, would write concertos like Chopin and not like Mozart.

My whole life has been a twenty years struggle between poetry and prose, or, if you like to call it so, Music and Law.

Confidence and courage are special skills to the art ... Within the four walls of his study, the artist should be modest, work diligently and conscientiously. While for the public, he'll show himself audacious, yes even into cheerful boldness. And so a new public's darling has arisen.

Nature best teaches how to pray, and how to reverence all the gifts the Almighty has given us. She is like a vast outspread handkerchief, embroidered with God's eternal name, on which we may dry alike our tears of sorrow and of joy; she turns weeping into ecstasy, and fills our hearts with speechless, quiet reverence and resignation.

We have learned to express the more delicate nuances of feeling by penetrating more deeply into the mysteries of harmony.

I was a God-fearing child, innocent and physically attractive.