Music with Ease > Classical Music Quotes > Ludwig van Beethoven Quotes

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I shall seize Fate by the throat; it shall certainly not bend and crush me completely.
-- Ludwig van Beethoven, letter to F G Wegeler, 1801

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.
-- Ludwig van Beethoven, quoted by Bettina von Arnin, letter to Goethe, 1810

When I open my eyes I must sigh, for what I see is contrary to my religion, and I must despise the world which does not know that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.
-- Ludwig van Beethoven, quoted by Bettina von Arnin, letter to Goethe, 1810

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy, it is the wine of a new procreation, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for men and makes them drunk with the spirit.
-- Ludwig van Beethoven, quoted in Marion M Scott, Beethoven (1934)

Muss es sein? Es muss sein! Es muss sein! (Must it be? It must be! It must be!)
-- Ludwig van Beethoven, comment written on the finale of his String Quartet in F Major, Op. 135

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

Plaudite, amici, comedia finita est. (Applaud, my friends, the comedy is over.)
-- Ludwig van Beethoven, on his deathbed, 1827

Everything will pass, and the world will perish but the Ninth Symphony will remain.
-- Michael Bakunin, quoted in Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station (1940)

A colossus beyond the grasp of most mortals, with his totally uncompromising power, his unsensual and uningratiating way with music as with people.
-- Yehudi Menuhin, Unfinished Journey (1976)

He reminds me of a man driving the car with the handbrake on, but stubbornly refusing to stop, even though there is a strong smell of burning rubber.
-- Colin Wilson, Brandy of the Damned (1964)

Beethoven's last quartets were written by a deaf man and should only be listened to by a deaf man.
--Sir Thomas Beecham





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Author: David Paul Wagner
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