“Moons and years pass by and are gone forever, but a beautiful moment shimmers through life a ray of light.”

“Ich halte es mit der Gelehrsamkeit wie die Fürsten mit der Verräterei: Ich ehre die Gelehrsamkeit und verachte die Gelehrten, die eben nichts als Gelehrte sind.”

“Music is the heart of life." She speaks love; "without it, there is no possible good and with it everything is beautiful.”

“Life is astonishingly short. As I look back over it, life seems so foreshortened to me that I can hardly understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that, quite apart from accidents, even the span of a normal life that passes happily may be totally insufficient for such a ride.”

“Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.”

“I passed by the brothel as though past the house of a beloved.”

“Hold fast! then you too will see the unchangeable dark distance, out of which nothing can come except one day the chariot; it rolls up, gets bigger and bigger, fills the whole world at the moment it reaches you - and you sink into it like a child sinking into the upholstery of a carriage that drives through the storm and night.”