“Dostoevsky,the only psychologist from whom I've anything to learn.”

“For man to be redeemed from revenge, that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!”

“I learned to walk; since then I have let myself run. I learned to fly; since then I do not need pushing in order to move from a spot.”

“Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.”

“But I suffer and have suffered with them: prisoners are they unto me, and stigmatised ones. He whom they call Saviour put them in fetters:— In fetters of false values and fatuous words! Oh, that some one would save them from their Saviour!”

“One must learn to love.— This is what happens to us in music: first one has to learn to hear a figure and melody at all, to detect and distinguish it, to isolate it and delimit it as a separate life; then it requires some exertion and good will to tolerate it in spite of its strangeness, to be patient with its appearance and expression, and kindhearted about its oddity:—finally there comes a moment when we are used to it, when we wait for it, when we sense that we should miss it if it were missing: and now it continues to compel and enchant us relentlessly until we have become its humble and enraptured lovers who desire nothing better from the world than it and only it.— But that is what happens to us not only in music: that is how we have learned to love all things that we now love. In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fairmindedness, and gentleness with what is strange; gradually, it sheds its veil and turns out to be a new and indescribable beauty:—that is its thanks for our hospitality. Even those who love themselves will have learned it in this way: for there is no other way. Love, too, has to be learned.”

“Must one first batter their ears, that they may learn to hear with their eyes? Must one clatter like kettledrums and penitential preachers? Or do they only believe the stammerer?”