Ludwig van Beethoven

“Art!  Who comprehends her?  With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?”

“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.”

“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.”

“Friends applaud, the comedy is over.”

“Off with you!  You’re a happy fellow, for you’ll give happiness and joy to many other people.  There is nothing better or greater than that!”

“Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.”

“Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.”

“Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.”

“Music is mediator between spiritual and sensual life.”

“Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.”

“Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears form the eyes of woman.”

“A great poet is the most precious jewel of a nation.”

“Recommend to your children virtue; that alone can make them happy, not gold.”

“Recommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy.  I speak from experience.”

“Anyone who tells a lie has not a pure heart, and cannot make a good soup.”

“Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.”

“Only the pure in heart can make a good soup.”

“The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, Thus far and no farther.”

“This is the mark of a really admirable man: steadfastness in the face of trouble.”

“Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.”