Johann Sebastian Bach is like an astronomer who, with the help of ciphers, finds the most wonderful stars.
Johann Sebastian Bach is no mere brook [Bach, meaning "brook" in German]. He's an ocean.
Johann Sebastian Bach is a composer in which the vital cells of music are united as the world is in God.
Johann Sebastian Bach is a composer in which there is too much crude Christianity, crude Germanism, crude scholasticism. He stands at the threshold of modern European music, but he is always looking back toward the Middle Ages.
Johann Sebastian Bach is a composer on whose every page we discover things which we thought were born only yesterday, from delightful arabesques to an overflowing of religious feeling greater than anything we have since discovered.