My mind and fingers have worked like the damned. Homer, the Bible, Plato, Locke, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Beethoven, Bach, Hummel, Mozart, Weber are all around me. I study them. I devour them with fury.

It is my fervent wish and my greatest ambition to leave a work with a few useful instructions for the pianists after me.

Music is the heart of life." She speaks love; "without it, there is no possible good and with it everything is beautiful.

For the virtuoso, musical works are in fact nothing but tragic and moving materializations of his emotions; he is called upon to make them speak, weep, sing and sigh, to recreate them in accordance with his own consciousness. In this way he, like the composer, is a creator, for he must have within himself those passions that he wishes to bring so intensely to life.

I conclude that the Wagnerian operas which are already in the repertoire, and other masterworks as well, stand in no further need of my services.

Music is never stationary; successive forms and styles are only like so many resting-places - like tents pitched and taken down again on the road to the Ideal.