“An opera may be allowed to be extravagantly lavish in its decorations, as its only design is to gratify the senses and keep up an indolent attention in the audience”

“Experience, like a pale musician, holds a dulcimer of patience in his hand”

“A man must pay the fiddler, in my case it so happened that a whole symphony orchestra often had to be subsidized”

“Where words fail, music speaks”

“I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs”

“There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.”