The poet sees better than other mortals. I do not see things as they are, but according to my own subjective impression, and this makes life easier and simpler.

You will be most readily cured of vanity or presumption by studying the history of music, and by hearing the master pieces which have been produced at different periods.

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

Without enthusiasm nothing great can be effected in art.

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

It is the curse of talent that, although it labors with greater steadiness and perseverance than genius, it does not reach its goal, while genius already on the summit of the ideal, gazes laughingly about.

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