One must not make oneself cheap here - that is a cardinal point - or else one is done. Whoever is most impertinent has the best chance.

It is a great consolation for me to remember that the Lord, to whom I had drawn near in humble and child-like faith, has suffered and died for me, and that He will look on me in love and compassion.

Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once (gleich dies zusammen). What a delight this is I cannot tell ! All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing lively dream.

I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.

Music must never offend the ear, but must please the listener, or, in other words, must never cease to be music.

I have never written the music that was in my heart to write; perhaps I never shall with this brain and these fingers, but I know that hereafter it will be written; when instead of these few inlets of the senses through which we now secure impressions from without, there shall be a flood of impressions from all sides; and instead of these few tones of our little octave, there shall be an infinite scale of harmonies - for I feel it - I am sure of it. This world of music, whose borders even now I have scarcely entered, is a reality, is immortal.

I too had to work hard, so as not to have to work hard any longer.