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

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

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

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

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

“He was dying all his life.”

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