Top 100 Ludwig van Beethoven Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “An artist is someone who has learned to trust in himself.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

52. “Music is the electric soil in which the spirit thinks, lives and invents. All that’s electrical stimulates the mind to flowing surging musical creation. I am electrical by nature.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

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

— Ludwig van Beethoven

54. “I can live only wholly with you or not at all.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

55. “There is no greater pleasure for me than to practice and exhibit my art.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

56. “Handel, to him I bow the knee.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

57. “I want to seize fate by the throat.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

58. “One must not hold one’s self so divine as to be unwilling occasionally to make improvements in one’s creations.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

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

— Ludwig van Beethoven

60. “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.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

61. “She was such a good loving mother, my best friend. Oh, who was happier than I when I could still say the dear name “Mother,” and it was heard, and whom can I say it to now?”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

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

— Ludwig van Beethoven

63. “Richard Wagner commenting on the music of Ludvig Van Beethoven: He was a Titan, wrestling with the Gods.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

64. “Fate gave to man the courage of endurance.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

65. “Love demands all, and has a right to all.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

66. “The foundation of friendship demands the greatest likeness of human souls and hearts.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

67. “In the country It seems as if every tree Said to me ‘Holy! Holy!’ Who can ever express The ecstasy of the woods! Almighty One, In the woods I am blessed. Happy every one in the woods. Every tree speaks through Thee. O God! What glory in the woodland.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

68. “I alter some things, eliminate and try again until I am satisfied. Then begins the mental working out of this material in its breadth, its narrowness, its height and depth.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

69. “Oh, how beautiful it is to be alive – would that I could live a thousand times.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

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

— Ludwig van Beethoven

71. “From the glow of enthusiasm I let the melody escape.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

72. “Mistakes – mistakes – you yourself are a unique mistake!”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

73. “What is to reach the heart must come from above; if it does not come from thence, it will be nothing but notes, body without spirit.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

74. “He that divines the secret of my music is freed from the unhappiness that haunts the whole world of men.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

75. “Of all my children, this is the one that cost me the worst birth-pangs and brought me the most sorrow; and for that reason it is the one most dear to me.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

76. “The world is a king, and like a king, desires flattery in return for favor; but true art is selfish and perverse – it will not submit to the mold of flattery.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

77. “Do you think I give a damn about your and your pathetic violin?”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

78. “Let your deafness no longer be a secret – even in art.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

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

— Ludwig van Beethoven

80. “Even in poverty I lived like a king for I tell you that nobility is the thing that makes a king.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

81. “I liked your opera. I think I will set it to music.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

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

— Ludwig van Beethoven

83. “I carry my thoughts about with me for a long time, often for a very long time, before writing them down.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

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

— Ludwig van Beethoven

85. “Only the flint of a man’s mind can strike fire in music.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

86. “Strange, I feel as if up to now I had written no more than a few notes.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

87. “After Rossini dies, who will be there to promote his music?”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

88. “Artists are fiery, they do not weep!”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

89. “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.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

90. “Recommend to your children to be virtuous, only the virtue can bring us happiness, not the money.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

91. “The amount of money one needs is terrifying...”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

92. “Art always demands of us something new.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

93. “Is it not beautiful?”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

94. “Men are not only together when they are with each other; even the distant and the dead live with us.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

95. “I know of no more sacred duty than to rear and educate a child.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

96. “Artists who have won fame are often embarrassed by it; thus their first works are often their best.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

97. “Don’t regard yourself as too divine to improve, occasionally, your own works.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

98. “There ought to be only one large art warehouse in the world, to which the artist could carry his art-works and from which he could carry away whatever he needed. As it is one must be half a tradesman.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

99. “I have always reckoned myself among the greatest admirers of Mozart, and shall do so till the day of my death.”

— Ludwig van Beethoven

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

— Ludwig van Beethoven