»To study music, we must learn the rules. To create music, we must break them.«
»Nothing is better than music; when it takes us out of time, it has done more for us than we have the right to hope for: it has broadened the limits of our sorrowful life, it has lit up the sweetness of our hours of happiness by effacing the pettinesses that diminish us, bringing us back pure and new to what was, what will be, what music has created for us.«
»Do not take up music unless you would rather die than not do so.«
»False notes can be forgiven, false music cannot.«
»The art of music is so deep and profound that to approach it very seriously only is not enough. One must approach music with a serious rigor and, at the same time, with a great, affectionate joy.«
»Music was not invented by the composer, but found.«
»Words created divergencies between beings, because their precise meanings put an opinion around the idea. Music only retains the highest and purest substance of the idea, since it has the privilege of expressing all, whilst excluding nothing.«
»In music everything is prolonged, everything is edified, and when the enchantment has ceased, we are still bathed in its clarity; solitude is accompanied by a new hope between pity for ourselves – which makes us more indulgent and more understanding – and the certitude of finding something again, that which lives for ever in music.«