What pleases the public is lively and vivid delineation which makes no demands on the intellect; but passionate and absolutist youth can only be enthralled by a problem.

Art is the funnel, as it were, through which spirit is poured into life.

But my deepest and most secret love belongs to the fair-haired and the blue-eyed, the bright children of life, the happy, the charming and the ordinary.

Is not life in itself a thing of goodness, irrespective of whether the course it takes for us can be called a 'happy' one?

He thought what a fine thing it was that people made music all over the world, even in the strangest settings – probably even on polar expeditions.

To allow only the kind of art that the average man understands is the worst small-mindedness and the murder of mind and spirit. It is my conviction that the intellect can be certain that in doing what most disconcerts the crowd, in pursuing the most daring, unconventional advances and explorations, it will in some highly indirect fashion serve man - and in the long run, all men.

People's behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives.