[...] Every individual who wishes to attain to true - inner and outer - autonomy should, as far as this is consistent with his innate sense of right and wrong, pursue the course which his more serious inclination and a certain irresistible inner urge bid him take. The world will readily forgive him the sufferings he brings down upon himself in this way, for it requires no great generosity on their part to do so; but only the person who would wish to alleviate that suffering has the right to offer advice, - and if, in spite of everything, he is not able to alleviate it, he must put up with seeing his advice ignored in the end. I am certainly not one of those people who are stubborn and unyielding by nature, on the contrary I am justifiably reproached for having too feminine a fickleness of mind. But I believe I have sufficient perseverance not to abandon a thing once begun until I am fully convinced of its true nature. Thus it was with Paris: - I am now firmly convinced that it is utterly impossible for me to succeed there, at least as long as I am thrown back upon my own resources in fighting this particular battle. [...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 42