Oscar Wilde

After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never commited, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own. Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one had been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one’s tears. I can fancy a man who had led a perfectly commenplace life, hearing by chance some curious piece of music, and suddenly discovering that his soul, without his being conscious of it, had passed through terrible experiences, and known fearful joys, or wild romantic loves, or great renunciations.