Is there anything more true than human pain? Is there anything more sincere than the cry for help from those who suffer? Only a great wave of mankind’s pity can surmount an immense wave of human misery?

If I miss one day of practice, I notice it. If I miss two days, the critics notice it. If I miss three days, the audience notices it.

I cannot imagine a genuinely happy home without music in it.

When one is an artist, what else can he be?

I owe my sucess in one per cent to my talent, in ten per cent to luck, and in ninety per cent to hard word. Work, work, and more work is the secret to success.

The Pole listening to Chopin listens to the voice of his whole race.

I do not believe, as do so many musicians, that genius should be left to fight its way to the light. Genius is too rare, too precious, to be permitted to waste the best years of life--the years of youth and lofty dreams--in a heart-breaking struggle for bread. To starve the soul with the body is to do worse than murder. Think, too, of what the public loses!

The ultimate necessity is the summoning of the mind and will to do their duty.

There flows throughout our whole history a stream of humanity, of generosity, of tolerance, so broad, so powerful, and so pure that it would be vain indeed to look for a similar one in the past of any other European country.

Art must be a slow and normal evolution.