Ludwig van Beethoven

"Don't only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine."

"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."

"Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."