Quotes from Ludwig van Beethoven

You're a happy fellow, for you'll give happiness and joy to many other people. There is nothing better or greater than that.

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

I have never thought of writing for reputation and honor. What I have in my heart must come out; that is the reason why I compose.

To me the highest thing, after God, is my honor.

I like your opera - I think I will set it to music

Don't only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine.

It is the power of music to carry one directly into the mental state of the composer.

ever thine, ever mine, ever ours

Then let us all do what is right, strive with all our might toward the unattainable, develop as fully as we can the gifts God has given us, and never stop learning

Only art and science make us suspect the existence of life to a higher level, and maybe also instill hope thereof.

Love, and love alone, is capable of giving thee a happier life.

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.

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

Music is mediator between spiritual and sensual life.

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

All my life I have regarded myself as one of Mozart's greatest admirers, and I will remain one until my last breath.

I don't want to know anything about your system of ethics. Strength is the morality of the man who stands out from the rest, and it is mine.

I will seize fate by the throat; it shall certainly never wholly overcome me.

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.

Rossini would have been a great composer if his teacher had spanked him enough on his backside.

Recommend virtue to your children, that alone - not wealth - can give happiness. It upholds in adversity and the thought of it and my art prevents me from putting an end to my life.

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?

Music comes to me more readily than words.

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.