When I am traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that ideas flow best and most abundantly.

Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

Let us put our trust in God and console ourselves with the thought that all is well, if it is in accordance with the will of the Almighty, as He knows best what is profitable and beneficial to our temporal happiness and our eternal salvation.

When I am at peace with myself . . . then thoughts flow into me most easily and at their best. Where they come from and how - that I cannot say . . . I'd be willing to work forever and forever if I were permitted to write only such music as I want to write and can write - which I myself think good.

If people could see into my heart, I should almost feel ashamed - all there is cold, cold as ice.

The whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind so that I can survey it at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What delight this is I cannot tell!

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