“The hearing of masterworks of different epochs will speediest of all cure you of vanity and self-adoration.”

“You will be most readily cured of vanity or presumption by studying the history of music, and by hearing the master pieces which have been produced at different periods.”

“Shouldn't we rather recognize that each person is a sort of unconscious anthology of all epochs of man; and that he may at times be moving simultaneously among different epochs?”

“Ordinary goodness is fraught with veins of vanity and self-interest and above all with pleasure--because goodness makes you feel more alive.”

“in reference to Persepolis and all palaces, cities and temples of the past: could these wonders have come into being without that suffering? without the overseer's whip, the slave's fear, the ruler's vanity? was not the monumentality of past epochs created by that which is negative and evil in man?”

“vanity, vanity, all is vanity”