Beethoven Best Quotes

It’s just an accident that we happen to be on earth, enjoying our silly little moments, distracting ourselves as often as possible so we don’t have to really face up to the fact that, you know, we’re just temporary people with a very short time in a universe that will eventually be completely gone. And everything that you value, whether it’s Shakespeare, Beethoven, da Vinci, or whatever, will be gone. The earth will be gone. The sun will be gone. There’ll be nothing. The best you can do to get through life is distraction. Love works as a distraction. And work works as a distraction. You can distract yourself a billion different ways. But the key is to distract yourself.

Memory" I’ve memorized all the fish in the sea I’ve memorized each opportunity strangled and I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love and I’ve memorized that too. I’ve memorized green rooms in St. Louis and New Orleans where I wept because I knew that by myself I could not overcome the terror of them and it. I’ve memorized all the unfaithful years (and the faithful ones too) I’ve memorized each cigarette that I’ve rolled. I’ve memorized Beethoven and New York City I’ve memorized riding up escalators, I’ve memorized Chicago and cottage cheese, and the mouths of some of the ladies and the legs of some of the ladies I’ve known and the way the rain came down hard. I’ve memorized the face of my father in his coffin, I’ve memorized all the cars I have driven and each of their sad deaths, I’ve memorized each jail cell, the face of each new president and the faces of some of the assassins; I’ve even memorized the arguments I’ve had with some of the women I’ve loved. best of all I’ve memorized tonight and now and the way the light falls across my fingers, specks and smears on the wall, shades down behind orange curtains; I light a rolled cigarette and then laugh a little, yes, I’ve memorized it all. the courage of my memory.

You will not find a treatise that is too learned for me; without laying claim to any genuine learning, I yet accustomed myself from childhood onwards to grasp the spirit of the best and wisest in every age. Shame on the artist who does not consider it his duty to achieve at least so much.

Raphael created his paintings not with his hands but with his spirit. Beethoven wrote his best compositions when he was already deaf.

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well. If you can't be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be be the best little shrub on the side of the hill.

We tend to listen to Mozart with ears trained by Beethoven, and that’s not the best way to listen to Mozart.

The next day, when I came home from the library, there was a small, used red record player in my room. I found my mother in the kitchen and spotted a bandage taped to her arm. “Ma,” I asked. “Where did you get the money for the record player?” “I had it saved,” she lied. My father lived well, had a large house and an expensive imported car, wanted for little, and gave nothing. My mother lived on welfare in a slum and sold her blood to the Red Cross to get me a record player. “Education is everything, Johnny,” she said, as she headed for the refrigerator to get me food. “You get smart like regular people and you don’t have to live like this no more.” She and I were not hugging types, but I put my hand on her shoulder as she washed the dishes with her back to me and she said, in best Brooklynese, “So go and enjoy, already.” My father always said I was my mother’s son and I was proud of that. On her good days, she was a good and noble thing to be a part of. That evening, I plugged in the red record player and placed it by the window. My mother and I took the kitchen chairs out to the porch and listened to Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony from beginning to end, as we watched the oil-stained waters of the Mad River roll by. It was a good night, another good night, one of many that have blessed my life.

Larry smiled a trifle ruefully. "Like Rolla [who is?], I've come too late into a world too old. I should have been born in the Middle Ages when faith was a matter of course; then my way would have been clear to me and I'd have sought to enter the order. I couldn't believe. I wanted to believe, but I couldn't believe in a God who wasn't better than the ordinary decent man. The monks told me that God had created the world for his glorification. That didn't seem to me a very worthy object. 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. I used to listen to the monks repeating the Lord's Prayer; I wondered how they could continue to pray without misgiving to their heavenly father to give them their daily bread. Do children beseech their earthly father to give them sustenance? They expect him to do it, they neither feel gratitude to him for doing so nor need to, and we have only blame for a man who brings children into the world that he can't or won't provide for. It seemed to me that if an omnipotent creator was not prepared to provide his creatures with the necessities, material and spiritual, of existence he'd have done better not to create them." "Dear Larry," I said, "I think it's just as well you weren't born in the Middle ages. You'd undoubtedly have perished at the stake." He smiled. "You've had a great deal of success," he went on. "Do you want to be praised to your face?" "It only embarrasses me." "That's what I should have thought. I couldn't believe that God wanted it either. We didn't think much in the air corps of a fellow who wangled a cushy job out of his C.O. By buttering him up. It was hard for me to believe that God thought much of a man who tried to wangle salvation by fulsome flattery. I should have thought the worship most pleasing to him was to do your best according to your lights.

The fact that so many books still name the Beatles as "the greatest or most significant or most influential" rock band ever only tells you how far rock music still is from becoming a serious art. Jazz critics have long recognized that the greatest jazz musicians of all time are Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, who were not the most famous or richest or best sellers of their times, let alone of all time. Classical critics rank the highly controversial Beethoven over classical musicians who were highly popular in courts around Europe. Rock critics, instead, are still blinded by commercial success. The Beatles sold more than anyone else (not true, by the way), therefore they must have been the greatest. Jazz critics grow up listening to a lot of jazz music of the past, classical critics grow up listening to a lot of classical music of the past. Rock critics are often totally ignorant of the rock music of the past, they barely know the best sellers.

The Heiligenstadt Testament" Oh! ye who think or declare me to be hostile, morose, and misanthropical, how unjust you are, and how little you know the secret cause of what appears thus to you! My heart and mind were ever from childhood prone to the most tender feelings of affection, and I was always disposed to accomplish something great. But you must remember that six years ago I was attacked by an incurable malady, aggravated by unskillful physicians, deluded from year to year, too, by the hope of relief, and at length forced to the conviction of a lasting affliction (the cure of which may go on for years, and perhaps after all prove impracticable). Born with a passionate and excitable temperament, keenly susceptible to the pleasures of society, I was yet obliged early in life to isolate myself, and to pass my existence in solitude. If I at any time resolved to surmount all this, oh! how cruelly was I again repelled by the experience, sadder than ever, of my defective hearing! — and yet I found it impossible to say to others: Speak louder; shout! for I am deaf! Alas! how could I proclaim the deficiency of a sense which ought to have been more perfect with me than with other men, — a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection, to an extent, indeed, that few of my profession ever enjoyed! Alas, I cannot do this! Forgive me therefore when you see me withdraw from you with whom I would so gladly mingle. My misfortune is doubly severe from causing me to be misunderstood. No longer can I enjoy recreation in social intercourse, refined conversation, or mutual outpourings of thought. Completely isolated, I only enter society when compelled to do so. I must live like art exile. In company I am assailed by the most painful apprehensions, from the dread of being exposed to the risk of my condition being observed. It was the same during the last six months I spent in the country. My intelligent physician recommended me to spare my hearing as much as possible, which was quite in accordance with my present disposition, though sometimes, tempted by my natural inclination for society, I allowed myself to be beguiled into it. But what humiliation when any one beside me heard a flute in the far distance, while I heard nothing, or when others heard a shepherd singing, and I still heard nothing! Such things brought me to the verge of desperation, and well-nigh caused me to put an end to my life. Art! art alone deterred me. Ah! how could I possibly quit the world before bringing forth all that I felt it was my vocation to produce? And thus I spared this miserable life — so utterly miserable that any sudden change may reduce me at any moment from my best condition into the worst. It is decreed that I must now choose Patience for my guide! This I have done. I hope the resolve will not fail me, steadfastly to persevere till it may please the inexorable Fates to cut the thread of my life. Perhaps I may get better, perhaps not. I am prepared for either. Constrained to become a philosopher in my twenty-eighth year! This is no slight trial, and more severe on an artist than on any one else. God looks into my heart, He searches it, and knows that love for man and feelings of benevolence have their abode there! Oh! ye who may one day read this, think that you have done me injustice, and let any one similarly afflicted be consoled, by finding one like himself, who, in defiance of all the obstacles of Nature, has done all in his power to be included in the ranks of estimable artists and men. My brothers Carl and [Johann], as soon as I am no more, if Professor Schmidt be still alive, beg him in my name to describe my malady, and to add these pages to the analysis of my disease, that at least, so far as possible, the world may be reconciled to me after my death. I also hereby declare you both heirs of my small fortune (if so it may be called). Share it fairly, agree together and assist each other. You know that any

Albert Einstein, considered the most influential person of the 20th century, was four years old before he could speak and seven before he could read. His parents thought he was retarded. He spoke haltingly until age nine. He was advised by a teacher to drop out of grade school: “You’ll never amount to anything, Einstein.” Isaac Newton, the scientist who invented modern-day physics, did poorly in math. Patricia Polacco, a prolific children’s author and illustrator, didn’t learn to read until she was 14. Henry Ford, who developed the famous Model-T car and started Ford Motor Company, barely made it through high school. Lucille Ball, famous comedian and star of I Love Lucy, was once dismissed from drama school for being too quiet and shy. Pablo Picasso, one of the great artists of all time, was pulled out of school at age 10 because he was doing so poorly. A tutor hired by Pablo’s father gave up on Pablo. Ludwig van Beethoven was one of the world’s great composers. His music teacher once said of him, “As a composer, he is hopeless.” Wernher von Braun, the world-renowned mathematician, flunked ninth-grade algebra. Agatha Christie, the world’s best-known mystery writer and all-time bestselling author other than William Shakespeare of any genre, struggled to learn to read because of dyslexia. Winston Churchill, famous English prime minister, failed the sixth grade.

Why would anyone write anything after Hemingway, or compose a symphony after Beethoven, or paint a landscape after Turner? It isn't necessarily about doing it better. It's about doing it." "Michael, that isn't what I meant. It's just, why should I slave away in the kitchen when I can just come here and pay for someone really talented to do all the work while I enjoy the results?" "Tell her, Mira," Michael says, reaching back into Renata's dish for another taste. I know what Michael means. If someone told me that I could travel anywhere and eat anything I wanted, choosing, if I so desired, to eat only in Michelin-rated restaurants for the rest of my life, but the price for such a gourmand's dream would be that I could never cook again, I'd turn it down without a moment's hesitation. It's about doing your best by a pile of mussels sweet from the sea, or holding a perfect tomato, warm, rosy, and smelling like summer, and knowing that there are a dozen ways that you can prepare it, each one a delicious homage.

But my point applies to a broader audience. Indulge me in one more thought experiment, a familiar one: You will be stranded on a desert island, and you can take just 10 books and 10 music CDs. What do you choose? My prediction is that even people who don’t listen to classical music regularly will take Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. Even people who haven’t picked up Shakespeare in years will take the collected works of Shakespeare. When we want something we can go back to again and again, we choose the same giants that the experts choose. My proposition about the literature, music, and visual arts of the last half century is that hardly any of it has enough substance to satisfy, over time. The post-1950 West has unquestionably produced some wonderful entertainments, and I do not mean wonderful slightingly. The Simpsons is wickedly smart, Saving Private Ryan is gripping, Groundhog Day is a brilliant moral fable. The West’s popular culture is for my money the only contemporary culture worth patronizing, with its best stories more compelling and revealing than the ones written by authors who purport to write serious novels, and its best popular music with more energy and charm than anything the academic composers turn out. It is a mixed bag, with the irredeemably vulgar side by side, sometimes intermingled, with the wittiest and most thoughtful work. But the quality is often first-rate—as well it might be. The people producing the best work include some who in another age could have been a Caravaggio or Brahms or Racine, and perhaps dozens of others good enough to have made their way onto the roster of significant figures. Why not be satisfied with wonderful entertainments?

Fortune's wheel is round, and does not always halt before the best and noblest.

If I go into company, a painful anxiety comes over me, since I am apprehensive of being exposed to the danger of betraying my situation. Such has been my state, too, during this half year that I have spent in the country. Enjoined by my intelligent physician to spare my hearing as much as possible, I have been almost encouraged by him in my present natural disposition; though, hurried away by my fondness for society, I sometimes suffered myself to be enticed into it. But what a humiliation, when any one standing beside me could hear at a distance a flute that I could not hear, or any one heard the shepherd singing and I could not distinguish a sound! Such circumstances brought me to the brink of despair, and had well nigh made me put an end to my life: nothing but my art held my hand. Ah! it seemed to me impossible to quit the world before I had produced all that I felt myself called to accomplish. And so I endured this wretched life—so truly wretched, that a somewhat speedy change is capable of transporting me from the best into the worst condition. Patience—so I am told—I must choose for my guide. I have done so.

En niemand ging op het juiste moment dood. Moessorgski, Poesjkin, Lermontov - die waren allemaal te vroeg gestorven. Tsjajkovski, Rosini, Gogol - die hadden allemaal eerder moeten sterven. Beethoven misschien ook wel. Het was natuurlijk niet alleen een probleem voor beroemde schrijvers en componisten, maar ook voor gewone mensen: het probleem om je beste jaren te overleven, voorbij het punt waarop het leven geen vreugde meer kan brengen en alleen nog vreselijke gebeurtenissen. […] In plaats van hem te vermoorden hadden ze hem in leven gelaten, en door hem in leven te laten hadden ze hem vermoord. -p.219

The salvation of art derives in the best of modern times from a celebration of the triumph of the autonomous self—as in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony—and in the worst of times from naming the unspeakable: the strange and feckless movements of the self trying to escape itself. Exhilaration comes from naming the unnameable and hearing it named. If Kafka’s Metamorphosis is presently a more accurate account of the self than Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, it is the more exhilarating for being so.

Most modern logicians would classify 15, "God has spoken to me" as equally meaningless in the above sense. Partially, I agree. Partially, I think it more accurate, and compassionate, to regard this as a badly-formulated self-referential statement. That is, just as "Beethoven is better than Mozart" is a bad formulation of the self-referential proposition 'Beethoven seems better than Mozart to me,"it may be most helpful to consider "God has spoken to me" as a bad formulation of the correct proposition, "I have had such an awe-inspiring experience that the best model I know to describe it is to say that God spoke to me." I think this is helpful because the proposition is only false if the person is deliberately lying, and because it reminds us that similar experiences are often stated within other paradigms, such as "I became one with the Buddha-mind" or "I became one with the Universe." These have different philosophical meanings than "God has spoken to me," but probably refer to the same kind of etic (non-verbal) experiences.

He was hungry for the warmth of another human being, and I was hungry for his warmth. And in different ways, we were both hungry for our mothers, he for the pleasant memories that were either true or a trick of his imagination, I for the memories that were best forgotten but ultimately forgiven. We were all flawed. I’d never met anyone who made me understand and accept that better than Beethoven.

Children displaced from their families, unconnected to their teachers, and not yet mature enough to relate to one another as separate beings, automatically regroup to satisfy their instinctive drive for attachment. The culture of the group is either invented or borrowed from the peer culture at large. It does not take children very long to know what tribe they belong to, what the rules are, whom they can talk to, and whom they must keep at a distance. Despite our attempts to teach our children respect for individual differences and to instill in them a sense of belonging to a cohesive civilization, we are fragmenting at an alarming rate into tribal chaos. Our very own children are leading the way. The time we as parents and educators spend trying to teach our children social tolerance, acceptance, and etiquette would be much better invested in cultivating a connection with them. Children nurtured in traditional hierarchies of attachment are not nearly as susceptible to the spontaneous forces of tribalization. The social values we wish to inculcate can be transmitted only across existing lines of attachment. The culture created by peer orientation does not mix well with other cultures. Because peer orientation exists unto itself, so does the culture it creates. It operates much more like a cult than a culture. Immature beings who embrace the culture generated by peer orientation become cut off from people of other cultures. Peer-oriented youth actually glory in excluding traditional values and historical connections. People from differing cultures that have been transmitted vertically retain the capacity to relate to one another respectfully, even if in practice that capacity is often overwhelmed by the historical or political conflicts in which human beings become caught up. Beneath the particular cultural expressions they can mutually recognize the universality of human values and cherish the richness of diversity. Peer-oriented kids are, however, inclined to hang out with one another exclusively. They set themselves apart from those not like them. As our peer-oriented children reach adolescence, many parents find themselves feeling as if their very own children are barely recognizable with their tribal music, clothing, language, rituals, and body decorations. “Tattooing and piercing, once shocking, are now merely generational signposts in a culture that constantly redraws the line between acceptable and disallowed behavior,” a Canadian journalist pointed out in 2003. Many of our children are growing up bereft of the universal culture that produced the timeless creations of humankind: The Bhagavad Gita; the writings of Rumi and Dante, Shakespeare and Cervantes and Faulkner, or of the best and most innovative of living authors; the music of Beethoven and Mahler; or even the great translations of the Bible. They know only what is current and popular, appreciate only what they can share with their peers. True universality in the positive sense of mutual respect, curiosity, and shared human values does not require a globalized culture created by peer-orientation. It requires psychological maturity — a maturity that cannot result from didactic education, only from healthy development. Only adults can help children grow up in this way. And only in healthy relationships with adult mentors — parents, teachers, elders, artistic, musical and intellectual creators — can children receive their birthright, the universal and age-honored cultural legacy of humankind. Only in such relationships can they fully develop their own capacities for free and individual and fresh cultural expression.

The playing was remarkable. I could not imagine a finer Pathétique further South. When he finished he said: ‘Now I play Chopin. Yes?’ and he replaced the bust of Beethoven with one of Chopin. ‘Do you wish waltzes or mazurkas?’ ‘Mazurkas.’ ‘I shall play my best favourite. It is the last music Chopin is writing.’ And he played the mazurka that Chopin dictated on his deathbed. The wind whistled in the street and the music ghosted from the piano as leaves over a headstone and you could imagine you were in the presence of genius.