Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, I hear them all at once. What a delight this is! All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing, lively dream.

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

Versification is, indeed, indispensable for music, but rhyme, solely for rhyming's sake, most pernicious.

As for pupils, I can have as many as I choose, but I do not choose to take many. I intend to be better paid than others, and so I wish to have fewer scholars. It is advisable to hang back a little at first, or it is all over with you, and you must pursue the common highway with the rest.

When I come to reflect on the subject, in no country have I received such honors or been so esteemed as in Italy, and nothing contributes more to a man's fame than to have written Italian operas, and especially for Naples.

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.