The more a race is governed by its passions, the less it has acquired the habit of cautious and reasoned argument, the more intense will be its love of music.
Sometimes the impact of Mozart’s music is so immediate that the vision in the mind remains blurred and incomplete, while the soul seems to be directly invaded, drenched in wave upon wave of melancholy.
People who have been made to suffer by certain things cannot be reminded of them without a horror which paralyses every other pleasure, even that to be found in reading a story.
Now that the steam engine rules the world, a title is an absurdity, still I am all dressed up in this title. It will crush me if Ido not support it. The title attracts attention to myself.
In matters of sentiment, the public has very crude ideas; and the most shocking fault of women is that they make the public the supreme judge of their lives.
The first virtue of a young man today – that is, for the next fifty years perhaps, as long as we live in fear, and religion has regained its powers – is to be incapable of enthusiasm and not to have much in the way of brains.
