If I weren't the way I am, I shouldn't write my symphonies.

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.

I feel the terror of idleness, like a red thirst.Death isn't just an idea.

We came to this world with love and hope to bloom like a flower, to beautify this garden we call earth, and spread the fragrance of happiness.

Hope is being confident of what we do not see.

Only with absolute fearlessness can we slay the dragons of mediocrity that invade our gardens.

In Antarctica you get to know people so well that in comparison you do not seem to know the people in civilization at all.

Ah me! why may not love and life be one?

I don't know, it's odd that girls ask if they can hug me. Don't ask, do it. I'm just a regular guy

All I am and all I have is at the service of my country.

But I know in my heart what I'm doing is right.

It accords with the most liberal spirit of philosophy to suppose that not a stone can fall, or a plant rise, without the immediate agency of divine power.