“I have Bright's disease and he has mine.”

“People feel with their hearts, Ellen: and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him.”

“Take that singing bird away!
It has too glad a lay
For an ear so lorn as mine!
And its wings are all too light,
And its feathers all too bright,
To rest in a bosom like mine!”

“I do not pretend that I have led a blameless life, or that one fault justifies another, but the public in judging a case like mine should remember that the darkest life may have a bright side, and that after the worst has been said against a man, he may, if he is heard, tell a story in his own rough way that will perhaps lead them to intimate the harshness of their thoughts against him, and find as many excuses for his as he would plead for himself.”

“I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death; and flung it back to me. People feel with their hearts and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him.”

“Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?”

“…"That disease he has does an awful job on you. Your lungs fill up."”

“Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches - he has made music sick.”

“The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man.”

“I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,
Which came from the soul of the Organ,
And entered into mine. It may be that Death's bright angel
Will speak in that chord again,
It may be that only in Heaven
I shall hear that grand Amen.”