“Man is so constituted that he then only excels other things when he knows himself.”

Music is part of us, and either ennobles or degrades our behavior.

All fortune is good fortune; for it either rewards, disciplines, amends, or punishes, and so is either useful or just.

Inconsistency is my very essence; it is the game I never cease to play as I turn my wheel in its ever changing circle, filled with joy as I bring the top to the bottom and the bottom to the top.

He who has calmly reconciled his life to fate, and set proud death beneath his feet, can look fortune in the face, unbending both to good and bad; his countenance unconquered.

And no renown can render you well-known: For if you think that fame can lengthen life By mortal famousness immortalized, The day will come that takes your fame as well, And there a second death for you awaits.

Give me Thy light, and fix my eyes on Thee!

In other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature, but in men it is a vice.

Music is so naturally united with us that we cannot be free from it – even if we so desired.

The now that passes produces time, the now that remains produces eternity.

Whose souls, albeit in a cloudy memory, yet seek back their good, but, like drunk men, know not the road home.

The completely simultaneous and perfect possession of unlimited life at a single moment.

The good is the end toward which all things tend.

Love binds people too, in matrimony’s sacred bonds where chaste lovers are met, and friends cement their trust and friendship. How happy is mankind, if the love that orders the stars above rules, too, in your hearts.

In every kind of adversity, the bitterest part of a man’s affliction is to remember that he once was happy.

Every man must be content with that glory which he may have at home.

You know when you have found your prince because you not only have a smile on your face but in your heart as well. Love puts the fun in together, the sad in apart, and the joy in a heart. Who would give a law to lovers? Love is unto itself a higher law.

The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.

If somebody’s going to represent our music live, I’d like to see it represented with excellence and spectacularly and with really great musicianship.

Men of perverse opinion do not know the excellence of what is in their hands, till someone dash it from them.

Many evil men are rich, and good men poor, but we shall not exchange with them our excellence for riches.

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

Excellence isn’t achieved without inspiration and perspiration. You’ve got to have both.

As a rule, only the poor are generous. Rich people can always find excellent reasons for not handing over twenty thousand francs to a relative.

Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.