I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different—unimagined, unprepared for, unknown.
It never seems to occur to people that a man might just want to write a piece of music.
The art of music above all the other arts is the expression of the soul of a nation.
I have always found it difficult to study. I have learnt almost entirely what I have learnt by trying it out on the dog.
Music is the reaching out towards the utmost realities by means of ordered sound.
The attitude of foreign to English musicians is unsympathetic, self-opinionated and pedantic. They believe that their tradition is the only one (this is specially true of the Viennese) and that anything that is not in accordance with that tradition is "wrong" and arises from insular ignorance.
But in the next world I shan't be doing music, with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it.
For the life of me, I did not understand how he[Atticus] could sit there in cold blood and read a newspaper when his only son stood an excellent chance of being murdered with a Confederate Army relic.
President James Garfield could write in Latin with one hand while writing in Greek with the other. I would give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
I'm not a vegetarian but I want you to know that my four dogs are safe.
Anybody depending on somebody else's gods is depending on a fox not to eat chickens.