"As for famous men who were not artists, I am beginning to be tired of them. Those poor little scoundrels who are called great men fill me with nothing but overwhelming horror. "
"Broad paths are open to every endeavour, and a sympathetic recognition is assured to every one who consecrates his art to the divine services of a conviction of a consciousness."
"Music has, like society, its laws of propriety and etiquette; and even those to whom their deeper meaning has not been revealed, are bound to respect and conform to them."
"Music may be termed the universal language of mankind, by which human feelings are made equally intelligible to all."
"Sorrowful and great is the artist's destiny. "
"The renewal of music [is] through its inner connection with poetry."
"You cannot imagine how it spoils one to have been a child prodigy."
"Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought, as it is forced in most arts and especially in the art of words. If music has one advantage over the other media through which a person can represent the impressions of the soul, it owes this to its supreme capacity to make each inner impulse audible without the assistance of reason... Music presents at once the intensity and the expression of feeling. It is the embodied and intelligible essence of feeling, capable of being apprehended by our senses. It permeates them like a dart, like a ray, like a mist, like a spirit, and fills our soul."
"As for famous men who were not artists, I am beginning to be tired of them. Those poor little scoundrels who are called great men fill me with nothing but overwhelming horror. "
