What I wanted and what I visualized while composing has not always been realized.

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 life’s great storms come, the weak sink, the cowardly jump ship, the strong drop an anchor, the mighty adjust their sails, and the great sail on to their destiny.

The heart of a worshipper is a heart arrested and set free by the love of God.

Old houses were scaffolding once and workmen whistling.

It’s very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better.

The orchestral or symphonic music never interested me.

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names in research.

I am highly favored by God, I experience great victories, supernatural turnarounds, and miraculous breakthroughs in the midst of great impossibilities.

Do I think faith will be an important part of being a good president? Yes, I do.

I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.

To live in Wales is to be conscious at dusk of the spilled blood that went into the making of the wild sky