“The essence of higher instrumental music lays herein that one is able to express in tones that what one is unable to say in words.”

“The language of tones belongs equally to all mankind, and melody is the absolute language in which the musician speaks to every heart.”

“The patriot subordinates himself to his State in order to raise it above all other States and thus, as it were, to find his personal sacrifice repaid with ample interest through the might and greatness of his fatherland.”

“Music is the inarticulate speech of the heart, which cannot be compressed into words, because it is infinite.”

“What Music expresses is eternal, infinite, and ideal; she expresses not the passion, love, desire, of this or that individual in this or that condition, but Passion, Love, Desire itself, and in such infinitely varied phases as lie in her unique possession and are foreign and unknown to any other tongue...So...Here's to Victory, gained by our higher sense over the worthlessness of the vulgar! To Love, which crowns our courage...To the day, to the night!...And three cheers for Music.”

“Be merry; you have cause, so have we all, of joy; for our escape is much beyond our loss . . . . then wisely weigh our sorrow with our comfort.”

“Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth.— Joy, gentle friends! joy and fresh days of love Accompany your hearts!”

“Thou mak'st me merry: I am full of pleasure; let us be jocund”

“If ever thou shalt love,In the sweet pangs of it remember me;For such as I am all true lovers are,Unstaid and skittish in all motions elseSave in the constant image of the creatureThat is beloved.”

“Love sees with the heart and not with mind.”

“I love a ballad but even too well if it be doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed and sung lamentably.”

“Now, my masters, happy man be his dole, say I; every man to his business.”

“In friendship, as in love, we are often happier through our ignorance than our knowledge.”

“Some there be that shadows kiss; Such have but a shadow's bliss.”

“I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.”

“The difference between talent and genius is in the direction of the current: in genius, it is from within outward; in talent from without inward.”

“Maybe you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots.”

“The soul of this man is his clothes.”

“We will have rings and things and fine array”

“Nothing comes amiss, so money comes withal.”