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

The principal mark of genius is not perfection, but originality.

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

If we were all determined to play the first violin we should never have an ensemble. therefore, respect every musician in his proper place.

I am so fresh in soul and spirit that life gushes and bubbles around me in a thousand springs.

From a pound of iron, that costs little, a thousand watch-springs can be made, whose value becomes prodigious. The pound you have received from the Lord,--use it faithfully.

Mendelssohn I consider the first musician of the day; I doff my hat to him as my superior. He plays with everything, especially with the grouping of the instruments in the orchestra, but with such ease, delicacy and art, with such mastery throughout.