[...] My Tannhäuser has recently enjoyed the most unparalleled success in Weimar, a fact confirmed by all the reports I have received: the Grand Duke has written almost imploringly to invite me to visit him there next May; though I myself set little store by all this grand-ducal business, his invitation happily coincides with my own desire to pay a brief visit to Thuringia and the Harz at about that time: if an opportunity presents itself to come to Leipzig, I may well bring Minna with me so that the two of you can then travel to Dresden together: that is, if the world has not been destroyed before then, since our noble princes, one and all, seem to have but a single aim in mind at present, namely to destroy the world.
[...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 84