1. Music is … A higher revelation than all Wisdom & Philosophy
2. Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine.
3. Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.
4. To play without passion is inexcusable!
5. I would rather write 10,000 notes than a single letter of the alphabet.
6. Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.
7. Music is like a dream. One that I cannot hear.
8. Never forget the days I spent with you. Continue to be my friend, as you will always find me yours.
9. Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.
10. Nothing is more intolerable than to have admit to yourself your own errors.
11. Only the pure of heart can make a good soup.
12. I shall seize fate by the throat.
13. To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable.
14. It seemed unthinkable for me to leave the world forever before I had produced all that I felt called upon to produce
15. It is my wish that you may have at better and freer life than I have had. Recommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience; this was what upheld me in time of misery.
16. I love a tree more than a man.
17. My misfortune is doubly painful to me because it will result in my being misunderstood. For me there can be no recreation in the company of others, no intelligent conversation, no exchange of information with peers; only the most pressing needs can make me venture into society. I am obliged to live like an outcast.
18. There are and always will be thousands of princes, but there is only one Beethoven!
19. I will take fate by the throat; it will never bend me completely to its will.
20. Never shall I forget the days I spent with you. Continue to be my friend, as you will always find me yours.
21. The guitar is a miniature orchestra in itself.
22. Recommend to your children virtues, that alone can make them happy, not gold.
23. A great poet is the most precious jewel of a nation.
24. Love demands all, and has a right to all.
25. Whoever tells a lie is not pure of heart, and such a person can not cook a clean soup.
26. What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.
27. Oh continue to love me – never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.
28. Never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.
29. Anyone who tells a lie has not a pure heart, and cannot make a good soup.
30. To sing a wrong note is insignificant, but to sing without passion is unforgivable.
31. Beethoven speaking to royalty: “What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.
32. Even in poverty I lived like a king for I tell you that nobility is the thing that makes a king
33. Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.
34. Must it be? It must be.
35. Anyone who tells a lie has not pure heart, and cannot make good soup.
36. I like your opera – I think I will set it to music
37. My misfortune is doubly painful to me because I am bound to be misunderstood; for me there can be no relaxation with my fellow-men, no refined conversations, no mutual exchange of ideas, I must live alone like someone who has been banished.
38. To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable!
39. The barriers are not erected which can say to [aspiring] talents and industry, “Thus far and no farther.
40. Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into it’s secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine.
41. I despise a world which does not feel that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.
42. From the glow of enthusiasm I let the melody escape. I pursue it. Breathless I catch up with it. It flies again; it disappears; it plunges into a chaos of diverse emotions. I catch it again; I seize it; I embrace it with delight.
43.You will not find a treatise that is too learned for me; without laying claim to any genuine learning, I yet accustomed myself from childhood onwards to grasp the spirit of the best and wisest in every age. Shame on the artist who does not consider it his duty to achieve at least so much.
44. I only live in my music, and I have scarcely begun one thing when I start on another. As I am now working, I am often engaged on three or four things at the same time.
45. I cannot bring myself to write for the flute, as this instrument is too limited and imperfect.
46. what is difficult is also beautiful, good, great, etc, therefore every person understands that this is the greatest praise that one can give, because the difficult makes one sweat
47. The true artist has no pride. He sees unfortunately that art has no limits; he has a vague awareness of how far he is from reaching his goal; and while others may perhaps admire him, he laments the fact that he has not yet reached the point whither his better genius only lights the way for him like a distant sun.
48. I joyfully hasten to meet death. If it come before I have had opportunity to develop all my artistic faculties, it will come, my hard fate notwithstanding, too soon, and I should probably wish it later – yet even then I shall be happy, for will it not deliver me from a state of endless suffering?
49. Thousands of people cultivate music; but few have the revelation of this great art.
50. Prince, what you are you are by accident of birth; what I am I am through myself. There have been and still will be thousands of princes; there is only one Beethoven.
51. Such incidents brought me to the verge of despair, but little more and I would have put an end to my life – only art it was that withheld me, and it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon me to produce, and so I endured this wretched existence.
52. Only art and science can raise men to the level of gods.
53. Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.
54. There ought to be an artistic depot where the artist need only hand in his artwork in order to receive what he asks for. As things are, one must be half a business man, and how can one understand – good heavens! – that’s what I really call troublesome.
55. Music from my fourth year began to be the first of my youthful occupations. Thus early acquainted with the gracious muse who tuned my soul to pure harmonies, I became fond of her, and, as it often seemed to me, she of me.
56. Whoever has created An abiding friendship, Or has won A true and loving wife, All who can call at least one soul theirs, Join in our song of praise; But any who cannot must creep tearfully Away from our circle.
