A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance.
Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers - and never succeeding.
Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do.
Music is...a form of remembering, a return to the seasons of the heart long gone.
Waiting and hoping are the whole of life, and as soon as a dream is realized it is destroyed.
I know of no better definition of love than the one given by Proust - Love is space and time measured by the heart.
Melody is a form of remembrance. It must have a quality of inevitability in our ears.
Love is born of faith, lives on hope, and dies of charity.
Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out.
Love, which, in concert with Abstinence, established Faith, and which, along with Patience, builds up Chastity, is like the columns that sustain the four corners of a house. For it was that same Love which planted a glorious garden redolent with precious herbs and noble flowers-roses and lilies-which breathed forth a wondrous fragrance, that garden on which the true Solomon was accustomed to feast his eyes.
