“Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.”

“Love cannot express the idea of music, while music may give an idea of love. ”

“...imagine anybody having lived forty-five or fifty years without knowing Hamlet! One might as well spend one's life in a coal mine.”

“Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its students."[Letter, November 1856]”

“The luck of having talent is not enough; one must also have a talent for luck. ”

“Il faut collectionner les pierres qu'on vous jette. C'est le début d'un piédestal.”

“He was dying all his life.”