Franz Schubert

"I am the unhappiest, most wretched man in the world. Imagine a man whose health will never be right again, and who in sheer despair over this, always makes things worse instead of better; imagine a man, I say, whose most brilliant hopes have come to naught, to whom the happiness of love and friendship offers nothing but the bitterest pain, and whose enthusiasm for the beautiful (at least inspiring) threatens to vanish; and ask yourself, is he not a wretched, unhappy man?"

— from Letter to Leopold Kupelwieser, 1824

"Oh, imagination! Thou greatest treasure of man, thou inexhaustible fount of all art and science! How many friends have I gained through thee, how many enemies hast thou made for me!"

— from Diary entry, 1816

"Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken."

— from Letter, 1826