“Every bit of theorizing I’ve ever done, including my interest in Berg, has come as a consequence of discoveries I made as a composer and interests that I developed as a composer. I never thought of my theory as being a kind of irrelevant activity to my composing.”

Autobiographical Recollections of C. R. Leslie with Selections from his correspondence Ed. Tom Taylor , Ticknor & Fields, Boston 1860

Händel ist der größte Komponist, der je lebte. Ich würde meine Kopfbedeckung abnehmen und auf seinem Grab knien.
Beethoven, speaking to J. A. Stumpff in the autumn of 1823. Published in Friedrich Kerst Beethoven der Mann und der Künstler, wie in seinen Eigenen Words enthüllt no. 112 http://www.bucheralle.org/6C76626D613131/ch35.html; Friedrich Kerst (trans. Henry Edward Krehbiel) Beethoven, the Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words (1964), p. 54.
Criticism

Reflections (1981)

Source: An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789; 1823), Ch. 1: Of the Principle of Utility

Interview: The Man Behind the Music - Jason Graves http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2015/05/interview_the_man_behind_the_music_-_jason_graves (May 16, 2015)

'Pierre Monteux in his own words', Classic Record Collector, Autumn 2003, Number 34, p. 18

Gramophone
Context: I think that if I were required to spend the rest of my life on a desert island, and to listen to or play the music of any one composer during all that time, that composer would almost certainly be Bach. I really can't think of any other music which is so all-encompassing, which moves me so deeply and so consistently, and which, to use a rather imprecise word, is valuable beyond all of its skill and brilliance for something more meaningful than that -- its humanity.

Said to Isaac Glikman, 1936; cited from Laurel Fay Shostakovich: A Life (2000) p. 92.