And when we remember the prodigious amount of practise that Paganini schooled himself to in youth; and join this to the recently discovered record of his long monastic retreats, when for months he worked and played and prayed, we can guess the secret of his power. If you wish me to present you a recipe for doing a deathless performance, I would give you this: Work, travel, solitude, prayer, and yet again—work.
FREDERIC CHOPIN
Nature does not design like art, however realistic she may be. She has caprices, inconsequences, probably not real, but very mysterious. Art only rectifies these inconsequences, because it is too limited to reproduce them. Chopin was a resume of these inconsequences which God alone can allow Himself to create, and which have their particular logic. He was modest on principle, gentle by habit, but he was imperious by instinct and full of a legitimate pride which was unconscious of itself. Hence arose sufferings which he did not reason and which did not fix themselves on a determined object.
—George Sand in "The Story of My Life"