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

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.

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.

In its beginnings, music was merely chamber music, meant to be listened to in a small space by a small audience.

Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You’ve got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it.

If you think life is magical or life is hard, either way you are right. Your thoughts are the source of reality.

Pain can cause us to learn no end of lessons, but without resolution there can be no healing!

Sometimes you lie to deceive people. Sometimes you lie because you need the lie to become the truth.

Think that day lost whose (low) descending sun Views from thy hand no noble action done.

A boy who is trouble is something entirely different as a man.

Rulers come and go. It's the people who are the real rulers of the country.

People are surprised to find out that an awful lot of people think that they're idiots.

I just long for the day when I wake up and find that the Saudi royal family are swinging from lamp-posts.

Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure.