“Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule.”

“we must judge men not so much by what they, as by what they make us feel that they have it in them to do. If a man has done enough in either painting, music, or the affairs of life, to make me feel that I might trust him in an emergency he has done enough”

“Property, marriage, the law; as the bed to the river, so rule and convention to the instinct; and woe to him who tampers with the banks while the flood is flowing.”

“To live is like to love--all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it”

“Life is like playing the violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.”

“Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.”

“To do great work one must be very idle as well as very industrious.”