Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its students.”[Letter, November 1856]

Life when one first arrives is a continual mortification as one’s romantic illusions are successively shattered and the musical treasure-house of one’s imagination crumbles before the hopelessness of the reality. Every day fresh experiences bring...

…imagine anybody having lived forty-five or fifty years without knowing Hamlet! One might as well spend one’s life in a coal mine.

The Prince stood beside the timpanist to count his rests for him and see that he came in in the right place. I suppressed all the trumpet passages which were clearly beyond the players’ grasp....