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.

A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance.

Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out.

Melody is a form of remembrance. It must have a quality of inevitability in our ears.

Waiting and hoping are the whole of life, and as soon as a dream is realized it is destroyed.