When you play, do not trouble yourself as to who is listening.  Yet always play as though a master listened to you.

-- Robert Schumann

 

Composing gives me great pleasure . . . There is nothing which surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound.

-- Clara Schumann

 

Music is a shower-bath of the soul, washing away all that is impure.

-- Arthur Schopenhauer

 

[Music]  Something that is essentially useless, as life is.

George Santayana