Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they're better.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did he would cease to be an artist.

It is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artist's life is that he cannot realize his ideal. But the true tragedy that dogs the steps of most artists is that they realize their ideal too absolutely. For, when the ideal is realized, it is robbed of its wonder and its mystery, and becomes simply a new starting point for an ideal that is other than itself. This is why music is the perfect type of art. Music can never reveal its ultimate secret.

The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet's dream: it is a most depressing and humiliating reality

Spontaneity is a meticulously prepared art