One must not make oneself cheap here - that is a cardinal point - or else one is done. Whoever is most impertinent has the best chance.

One must not make oneself cheap here -- that is a cardinal point -- or else one is done. Whoever is most impertinent has the best chance.

When I am traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that ideas flow best and most abundantly.

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.

I cannot write poetically, for I am no poet. I cannot make fine artistic phrases that cast light and shadow, for I am no painter. I can neither by signs nor by pantomime express my thoughts and feelings, for I am no dancer; but I can by tones, for I am a musician.