Nevertheless the passions, whether violent or not, should never be so expressed as to reach the point of disgust...
When I am traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that ideas flow best and most abundantly.
I never lie down at night without reflecting that, young as I am, I may not live to see another day.
Even when I can play Europe’s most precious keyboard, to have to listen to people who don’t understand, or do not want to understand, and who are incapable of grasping my intent, whatever I play, does surely forfeit my lust for playing at all.
Love guards the heart from the abyss.
God first, then papa.
I must give you a piece of intelligence that you perhaps already know, namely that the ungodly arch-villain Voltaire has died miserably like a dog, just like a brute. That is his reward!
I too had to work hard, so as not to have to work hard any longer.
I love it when an aria fits a singer as perfectly as a suit of well-tailored clothes.
One must not make oneself cheap here – that is a cardinal point – or else one is done. Whoever is most impertinent has the best chance.
She’s only pretty in that she has two small black eyes and a good figure.
My fatherland has always the first claim on me.
To every good friend I send my greet feet; addio nitwit. Love true true true until the grave, if I live that long and do behave.
Directly after God in heaven comes a Papa.
I do not hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them gleich alles zusammen – at the same time all together.
If Germany, my beloved fatherland, of whom you know I am proud, will not accept me, then must I, in the name of God, again make France or England richer by one capable German – and to the shame of the German nation.
Neither rejoice nor lament prematurely; for whatever may happen, all will be well if we only have health; for happiness exists – merely in the imagination.
Now let the matter rest as it is, or as it may be, what avail useless speculations? What is to occur we do not know; still in so far we do! what God wills!
As I love Mannheim, Mannheim loves me.
To win applause one must write stuff so simple that a coachman might sing it.