These blessed candles of the night.
Man is naturally lazy, therefore he invents labor-saving devices.
Art is great only when it bears the stamp of the individual.
Chopin was an invalid, as you know, but his music was volcanic.
Change follows change in us, almost without transition; we pass from blissful rapture to sobbing woe; a single step divides our sublimest ecstasies from the darkest depth of spiritual despondency.
Musical expression is never primarily national, but is personal and individual rather. It is so deep, so profound, that it goes beyond and below nationality and gives voice to the most private feeling. In music there is never exact heredity. Each man is an individual.
Rhythm is the pulse of music.
Let not a man do what his sense of right bids him not to do, nor desire what it forbids him to desire. This is sufficient. The skillful artist will not alter his measures for the sake of a stupid workman.
I decided to focus on the things I could control and let go of the things that were out of my hands. That lesson has provided me with great relief; it has brought great things into my life.
Readers will always insist on adventures, and though you can have grief without adventures, you cannot have adventures without grief.
One of the secrets in life is that we really lead a better life when we're living for others than we do when we're living for ourselves, and I think that's the way for our creator intended for it to be, is that if we can live for other people, we really leave this world in a different way.