Top 100 Quotes About Beethoven
#2. If Beethoven were sent to nursery school today, they would medicate him, and he would be a postal clerk.
Leon Botstein
#3. Whoever tells a lie is not pure of heart, and such a person can not cook a clean soup.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
#4. A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms; but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description.
William James
#5. If you go to Japan for instance, you should know that they have a different way of playing Beethoven or Brahms. But if you play with them Mozart, Debussy, Mendelssohn, they have a wonderful light feeling for that.
Kurt Masur
#6. Most Beethoven symphonies require 80 or more instruments, and the late romantics even more.
Neville Marriner
#7. Astrology is an aesthetic affront. It cheapens astronomy, like using Beethoven for commercial jingles.
Richard Dawkins
#8. People become who they are. Even Beethoven became Beethoven.
Randy Newman
#9. Handel is the greatest composer that ever lived ... I would uncover my head and kneel down on his tomb.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
#10. Consciousness is our gateway to experience: It enables us to recognize Van Gogh's starry skies, be enraptured by Beethoven's Fifth, and stand in awe of a snowcapped mountain. Yet consciousness is subjective, personal, and famously difficult to examine.
Daniel Bor
#11. 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
#12. I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.
Tom Stoppard
#14. And it's a crime because the great plays of history, going all the way back to the Greeks, are part of everybody's heritage. It's just like in music, Beethoven or Mozart, that's everybody's heritage.
Tony Randall
#16. And this famine was as purely a product of oversize brains as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
Kurt Vonnegut
#17. Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart, none of them were born in Vienna. They all moved there. It became a magnet, but what made it magnetized in the first place? There has to be a seed there. In the case of Vienna of about 1780, it was this deep-seated love of music.
Eric Weiner
#18. Milton saw not, and Beethoven heard not, but the sense of beauty was upon them, and they fain must speak.
John Ruskin
#19. No; look out for the part where you think you have done with the goblins and they come back,' breathed Helen, as the music started with a goblin walking quietly over the universe, from end to end.
E. M. Forster
#20. I love art, I love music. I can listen to Stockhausen and a very experimental, avant-garde approach, and I can listen to Beethoven and have a more classical, traditional approach. Why not be able to do that with film performance?
Nicolas Cage
#21. Those who know the marvels of chess and wonder why this game of all games does not enjoy greater popularity may also ask why Pepsi-Cola is consumed by more people than Chateau Lafite, or the Beatles are more familiar than Beethoven.
Gregor Piatigorsky
#22. I have truly eclectic taste in music, and I seem to cycle through phases in terms of to what's inspiring me. I'll go from Beethoven to Sigur Ros; world music, Brit-pop, classic rock, blues/jazz, even the odd bit of heavy metal.
Rachel Miner
#23. But that some sonatas of Beethoven are written tragic no one can gainsay; yet they can triumph or despair as the player decides, and Lucy had decided that they should triumph.
E. M. Forster
#24. I'd like to hear your opinion on this piece of Beethoven. And remember, it is not Beethoven who is being examined here.
Paul Strathern
#25. A Beethoven symphony should be rehearsed like chamber music, only for a lot more people.
Andre Previn
#26. 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
#27. With copious evidence ranging from Plato's haughtiness to Beethoven's tirades, we may conclude that the most brilliant people of history tend to be a prickly lot.
Stephen Jay Gould
#28. Music is the mediator between the life of the senses and the life of the spirit.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
#29. I don't know if this is true to you but for me
sometimes it gets so bad
that anything else
say like
looking at a bird on an overhead
power line
seems as great as a Beethoven symphony.
then you forget it and you're back
again.
Charles Bukowski
#30. Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer.
John Ruskin
#31. Beethoven's symphonies are not 'relaxing.' They are the most exciting things that have ever been created by a human being.
Joshua Bell
#32. 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!
Ludwig Van Beethoven
#33. Anybody can build a building, putting some doors into it, but how many times have you been in a building that moves you to tears the way Beethoven's 'Eighth' does?
Philip Johnson
#34. I remembered that Beethoven's symphonies had sometimes been given names ... they should have call [the Fifth] the Vampire, because it simply refused to lie down and die.
Alan Bradley
#36. I play Beethoven and Bach. At the same
time, Biggie is my dog.
Alicia Keys
#37. He thought of death in its infinite groanings, of Aztecs ripping out living hearts and of cancer and three-year-olds buried alive and he wondered whether God was alien and cruel, but then remembered Beethoven and the dappling of things and "Hurrah for Karamazov" and kindness. He
William Peter Blatty
#39. Beethoven had a great look. It was very much about the drama of appearance.
Boy George
#40. [Adams] supposed that, except musicians, everyone thought Beethoven a bore, as every one except mathematicians thought mathematics a bore.
Henry Adams
#41. The three greatest composers are Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. All the others are cretins.
Hans Von Bulow
#42. 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
#43. Composers most identified with the chamber music form are Corelli, Vivaldi, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and, of course, Bach. Of course, Bach. If there is any one composer who gives us reason and emotion, it is Bach.
Karen DeCrow
#44. Bernard Herrmann used to write all his scores by himself. So did Bach, Beethoven and Stravinsky. I don't understand why this happens in the movie industry.
Ennio Morricone
#47. Beethoven was a deeply political man in the broadest sense of the word. He was not interested in daily politics, but concerned with questions of moral behaviour and the larger questions of right and wrong affecting the entire society.
Daniel Barenboim
#48. I really like the Doors. I like Kevin Spacey, Bruce Springsteen, Will Farrell, Reggie Watts, Tina Turner, who is also very hot, Tracy Chapman. Beethoven.
Flula Borg
#49. One must not hold one's self so divine as to be unwilling occasionally to make improvements in one's creations.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
#50. There are ... scientific works - star catalogues, for example - which are not art; but the theoretical structures of Gauss, Einstein, or Maxwell are original, individual, "very personal" responses and expressions of exactly the same kind as the creative works of Beethoven or Dostoievski.
James R Newman
#51. Do you think if two people liked the same thing, it could bring them closer together?"
"Certainly ... Take classical music, for instance ... Two people who shared a love for Beethoven could become very close ... "
"How about TV?
Charles M. Schulz
#52. I must confess that I lead a miserable life. For almost two years, I have ceased to attend any social functions, just because I find it impossible to say to people, 'I am deaf.' If I had any other profession, I might be able to cope with my infirmity; but in my profession, it is a terrible handicap.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
#53. Did Beethoven create his symphonies for his glorification? I don't believe it. I believe he created them because the music in his soul demanded expression and then all he tried to do was to make them as perfect as he knew how.
W. Somerset Maugham
#54. Oh you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn, or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you. Oh how harshly was I flung back by the doubly sad experience of my bad hearing.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
#55. Just as surely as every new language mastered opens up a new world, so knowledge of a Beethoven, a Chopin, or a Schumann opens up a new world in spiritual beauty and thought.
Ignacy Jan Paderewski
#56. Barrow, who evidently had never seen an atlas, felt superior to Descartes, Rembrandt, and Beethoven.
Ken Follett
#57. I was very drawn to music of all types, from Beethoven to Jimi Hendrix. There were musicians and composers who obviously were expressing a vision that was beyond the mundane.
Frederick Lenz
#58. I like these calm little moments before the storm, it reminds me of Beethoven
Gary Oldman
#59. Do they merit vitriol, even a drop of it? Yes, because they corrupt the young, persuading them that the mature world, which produced Beethoven and Schweitzer, sets an even higher value on the transient anodynes of youth than does youth itself ... They are the Hollow Men. They are electronic lice.
Anthony Burgess
#60. Beethoven's importance in music has been principally defined by the revolutionary nature of his compositions. He freed music from hitherto prevailing conventions of harmony and structure.
Daniel Barenboim
#62. In South America, I heard the 8th Symphony of Beethoven. And the young conductor thought, Beethoven must be heroic. But this is piece which shouldn't be heroic. And this was such a misunderstanding, such a deep misunderstanding.
Kurt Masur
#63. Nothing is more intolerable than to have admit to yourself your own errors.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
#66. Agape is related to Eros, as Mozart to Beethoven. How could they possibly be confused?
Karl Barth
#68. Right on time, sugar." Josh draped his arm around her shoulders and steered her through the lobby. "Traffic okay?"
"Yeah, except when that alien spaceship landed on I-90 and then all those crickets jumped out to perform Beethoven's Fifth on kazoos. Otherwise, clear sailing.
Jamie Farrell
#70. On the other hand, for years I did not listen to Mozart after I was assaulted by the perverse idea that Mozart does not exist, because when he is good he is Beethoven and when he is bad he is Haydn.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
#71. Embrace paradox. Look for patterns.
Beethoven holds the key but doesn't know it yet.
Hiding inside your Shangri-La you might find the Gates of Hell
Mark Frost
#72. One of Beethoven's favorite dishes was macaroni and cheese. The girl I marry must be able to make good macaroni and cheese ... "
"How did Beethoven feel about cold cereal?
Charles M. Schulz
#73. [Art] would have helped us survive in the Pleistocene - in the period, say, 1.6 million years ago until fairly recently. The kind of imaginative abilities that artists have and that we all have in the appreciation of art - to appreciate Jane Austen, the late quartets of Beethoven.
Denis Dutton
#74. Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration.
Ernest Newman
#75. Imagine listening to Beethoven with the prepossession that C is a good note and F a bad one; yet this is exactly the stand point from which all uninitiates contemplate the universe. Obviously, they miss the music.
Aleister Crowley
#76. You've been listening to the adagio from Beethoven's 7th Symphony. I think Ludwig pretty much summed up death in this one. You know, he had lost just about all his hearing when he wrote it, and I've often wondered if that didn't help him tune into the final silence of the great beyond.
Andrew Schneider
#77. I'm very eclectic in my music tastes - anything from Nina Simone to Beethoven to Talvin Singh.
Monica Ali
#78. Mathematics is an activity governed by the same rules imposed upon the symphonies of Beethoven, the paintings of DaVinci, and the poetry of Homer.
Edward Kasner
#79. Yesterday I was playing Beethoven's fifth, because I love that.
Joan Armatrading
#80. Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.
E. M. Forster
#81. There is no loftier mission than to approach the Divinity nearer than other men, and to disseminate the divine rays among mankind.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
#82. There was one thing Beethoven didn't do. When one of his string quartets was played, you can believe the second violin wasn't improvising.
Wynton Marsalis
#83. Such incidents brought me to the verge of despair, but little more and I would have put an end to my life - only art it was that withheld me, - ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I had felt called upon to produce.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
#85. Composers in the old days used to keep strictly to the base of the theme, as their real subject. Beethoven varies the melody, harmony and rhythms so beautifully.
Johannes Brahms
#86. To do good whenever one can, to love liberty above all else, never to deny the truth, even though it be before the throne.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
#87. The pieces that have survived, the ones that we all love, were not all popular in their time. Just look at Beethoven's late string quartets. The music that the musical community selects, however, is usually the very best.
David Finckel
#88. In his late quartets, Beethoven introduces an element that shouldn't be there, that should be left for meditation, though I love them. I can see that through them came Wagner and Mahler and Schoenberg and Berg. And then came Tracey Emin. And I can see it all as one downward path.
John Tavener
#89. Music from my fourth year began to be the first of my youthful occupations. Thus early acquainted with the gracious muse who tuned my soul to pure harmonies, I became fond of her, and, as it often seemed to me, she of me.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
#90. I call the notion that we are nothing but killer apes the Beethoven fallacy. Beethoven was disorganized and messy, and yet his music is the epitome of order.
Frans De Waal
#91. Beethoven tells you what it's like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it's like to be human. Bach tells you what it's like to be the universe.
Douglas Adams
#92. I cried for it. That's how I see life too. I was so interested in the opera that for a while I forgot the circumstances of my crazy life and got lost in the great mournful sounds of Beethoven and the rich Rembrandt tones of his story.
Jack Kerouac
#93. Why we are here: To tremble at the terrible beauty of the stars, to shed a tear at the perfection of Beethoven's symphonies, and to crack a cold one now and then.
David Letterman
#94. It's funny, because in 1970 I met the Beatles quite by a chance at a party. It was the Beethoven bicentenary, and I was then also playing the Beethoven Sonatas. And that's all they wanted to hear about - I wanted to talk about them, and all they wanted to talk about was Beethoven.
Daniel Barenboim
#95. Figured Bass (Harmony) and Religion are self-contained things, one should not argue these.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
#96. Pornography is rather like trying to find out about a Beethoven symphony by having somebody tell you about it and perhaps hum a few bars.
Robertson Davies
#97. The Beethoven Experience provided the opportunity to solidify the relationship between the Orchestra and me, the Orchestra and me and the public, between all of us and the city of New York, because Beethoven after all is a really amazing point of reference.
Lorin Maazel
#98. No friend have I. I must live by myself alone; but I know well that God is nearer to me than others in my art, so I will walk fearlessly with Him.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
#99. I know of only one composer who measures up to Beethoven, and that is Bruckner.
Richard Wagner
#100. Music should be an elective experience. You should go, "I'm going to sit down and listen to some Beethoven, by God," and then you get to hear it.
Linda Ronstadt
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