And do you agree with me, that the first condition of an artist should be to bear respect towards what is great, and to bow to it and acknowledge it, and not attempt to extinguish great flames for the sake of making his own rushlight burn more brightly?
Felix Mendelssohn, in a letter to to Wilhelm Taubert, August 27, 1831, cited from Reisebriefe von Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Aus den Jahren 1830 bis 1832 (Leipzig: Hermann Mendelssohn, 1862) p. 256; translation from Emil Naumann (trans. F. Praeger) The History of Music (London: Cassell, 1886) vol. 2, p. 1052-53.
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Felix Mendelssohn
