Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested. So let us not be idle.

Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.

Beauty and fullness of tone can be achieved by having the whole orchestra play with high clarinets and a carefully selected number of piccolos.

You must renounce all superficiality, all convention, all vanity and delusion.

The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star but to go one's way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause.

What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.

A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.

But it's peculiar, as soon as I am in the midst of nature and by myself, everything that is base and trivial vanishes without trace. On such days nothing scares me; and this helps me again and again.

I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.

If you think you're boring your audience, go slower not faster.

When you have the grace to speak, declare sacred-utterances.

Only God Himself fully appreciates the influence of a Christian mother in the molding of character in her children.

There was plenty of life left and if he had to he would use it all to get her back. The time had passed for making promises to her-all that was left for him was to act.

Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, uses that something to support their own existence.

If you do what you fear, you won't fear what you do.

It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading.

I wouldn't be where I am now if I didn't fail ... a lot. The good, the bad, it's all part of the success equation.

There is one hell of a difference between fighting in the ring and going to war in Vietnam.

The truth is that I am not a frump... I just enjoy being laid back.

O my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible.