“
If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
”
”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“
Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine.
”
”
Ludwig van Beethoven
“
We all reject out of hand the idea that the love of our life may be something light or weightless; we presume our love is what must be, that without it our life would no longer be the same; we feel that Beethoven himself, gloomy and awe-inspiring, is playing the “Es muss sein!” to our own great love.
”
”
Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)
“
You'll have a good, secure life when being alive means more to you than security, love more than money, your freedom more than public or partisan opinion, when the mood of Beethoven's or Bach's music becomes the mood of your whole life … when your thinking is in harmony, and no longer in conflict, with your feelings … when you let yourself be guided by the thoughts of great sages and no longer by the crimes of great warriors … when you pay the men and women who teach your children better than the politicians; when truths inspire you and empty formulas repel you; when you communicate with your fellow workers in foreign countries directly, and no longer through diplomats...
”
”
Wilhelm Reich (Listen, Little Man!)
“
Don’t say you don’t have enough time or enough money to change the world. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Gandhi, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci and Jesus Christ.
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”
Shannon L. Alder
“
You have to find your own shtick. A Picasso always looks like Picasso painted it. Hemingway always sounds like Hemingway. A Beethoven symphony always sounds like a Beethoven symphony. Part of being a master is learning how to sing in nobody else's voice but your own.
”
”
Hugh MacLeod (Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity)
“
Beethoven speaking to royalty: "What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.
”
”
Ludwig van Beethoven
“
The vast open sea at night is a song being written; a rhyme, a mysterious and gentle arpeggiated work of Beethoven. It's sung by the waves as they travel on the face of the ocean, and their lyrics are the rhythm of the pounding surf.
”
”
Giselle V. Steele (Rivers Never Fill The Sea)
“
Walaupun kita hebat di musik, olahraga, seni, ataupun sastra, selama kita nggak menguasai sains, kita tetap nggak akan dianggap pintar. Sebenarnya, apa salahnya hebat dalam suatu bidang yang nggak berhubungan sama angka?... Itu sama saja menganggap Beethoven itu bodoh, Van Gogh itu idiot, Pele itu bego, dan Shakespeare itu tolol.
”
”
Windhy Puspitadewi (Let Go)
“
Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you. We are each so atomically numerous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms - up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested - probably once belonged to Shakespeare.
A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven, and any other historical figure you care to name.
So we are all reincarnations - though short-lived ones. When we die, our atoms will disassemble and move off to find new uses elsewhere - as part of a leaf or other human being or drop of dew.
”
”
Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
“
A deaf composer's like a cook who's lost his sense of taste. A frog that's lost its webbed feet. A truck driver with his license revoked. That would throw anybody for a loop, don't you think? But Beethoven didn't let it get to him. Sure, he must have been a little depressed at first, but he didn't let misfortune get him down. It was like, Problem? What problem? He composed more than ever and came up with better music than anything he'd ever written. I really admire the guy. Like this Archduke Trio--he was nearly deaf when he wrote it, can you believe it? What I'm trying to say is, it must be tough on you not being able to read, but it's not the end of the world. You might not be able to read, but there are things only you can do. That's what you gotta focus on--your strengths. Like being able to talk with the stone.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)
“
The barriers are not erected which can say to [aspiring] talents and industry, “Thus far and no farther.
”
”
Ludwig van Beethoven
“
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.
”
”
Ludwig van Beethoven
“
They had been talking about his friend Z. when she announced, "If I hadn't met you, I'd certainly have fallen in love with him."
Even then, her words had left Tomas in a strange state of melancholy, and now he realized it was only a matter of chance that Tereza loved him and not his friend Z. Apart from her consummated love for Tomas, there were, in the realm of possibility, an infinite number of unconsummated loves for other men.
We all reject out of hand the idea that the love of our life may be something light or weightless; we presume our love is what must be, that without it our life would no longer be the same; we feel that Beethoven himself, gloomy and awe-inspiring, is playing the "Es muss sein!" to our own great love.
Tomas often thought of Tereza's remark about his friend Z. and came to the conclusion that the love story of his life exemplified not "Es muss sein!" (It must be so), but rather "Es konnte auch anders sein" (It could just as well be otherwise).
”
”
Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)
“
إن الملوكَ والأمراءَ يستطيعون أن يخلقوا الأساتذة والوزراء وأن يمنحوا الرتبَ والألقاب، ولكنهم لا يخلقون العظماء ولا العقول التي تعلو على السواد .. فإذا التقى رجلٌ مثلي ورجلٌ مثل جوته، فخليقٌ بالمالكين وذوي السلطان أن يعرفوا موضعَ العظمة هناك
”
”
Ludwig van Beethoven
“
Poets represent love as sculptors design beauty, as musicians create melody; that is to say, endowed with an exquisite nervous organization, they gather up with discerning ardor the purest elements of life, the most beautiful lines of matter, and the most harmonious voices of nature. There lived, it is said, at Athens a great number of beautiful girls; Praxiteles drew them all one after another; then from these diverse types of beauty, each one of which had its defects, he formed a single faultless beauty and created Venus. The man who first created a musical instrument, and who gave to harmony its rules and its laws, had for a long time listened to the murmuring of reeds and the singing of birds. Thus the poets, who understand life, after knowing much of love, more or less transitory, after feeling that sublime exaltation which real passion can for the moment inspire, eliminating from human nature all that degrades it, created the mysterious names which through the ages fly from lip to lip: Daphnis and Chloe, Hero and Leander, Pyramus and Thisbe.
To try to find in real life such love as this, eternal and absolute, is but to seek on public squares a woman such as Venus, or to expect nightingales to sing the symphonies of Beethoven.
”
”
Alfred de Musset (The Confession of a Child of the Century)
“
And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don’t just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn’t do it any better. 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.
”
”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“
I'm sorry I can't hear you
”
”
Ludwig van Beethoven
“
And now a surprise: Beethoven was deeply inspired by his reading of the Bhagavad Gita.
”
”
Stephen Cope (The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling)
“
The only sign of "superiority" I acknowledge in Man is goodness.
”
”
Ludwig van Beethoven
“
The last song recorded for Abbey Road was Lennon’s BECAUSE - a three-part harmony in C sharp minor inspired by hearing Yoko Ono play the Adagio sostenuto of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14, Op. 27 No. 2 (Moonlight).
”
”
Ian MacDonald (Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties)
“
Ordinary psyches often react to bad news with a momentary thrill, seeing the world, for once, in jagged clarity, as if lightning has just struck. But then darkness and dysfunction rush in. A mind such as Beethoven's remains illumined, or sees in the darkness shapes it never saw before, which inspire rather than terrify. This altered shape (raptus, he would say) makes art of the shapes, while holding in counterpoise such dualities as intellect and intuition, the conscious and the unconscious, mental health and mental disorder, the conventional and the unconventional, complexity and simplicity.
”
”
Edmund Morris (Beethoven: The Universal Composer (Eminent Lives))
“
El genio se compone del dos por ciento de talento y del noventa y ocho por ciento de perseverante aplicación
”
”
Ludwig van Beethoven
“
I once was the guest of the week on a British radio show called Desert Island Discs. You have to choose the eight records you would take with you if marooned on a desert island. Among my choices was Mache dich mein Herze rein from Bach’s St Matthew Passion. The interviewer was unable to understand how I could choose religious music without being religious. You might as well say, how can you enjoy Wuthering Heights when you know perfectly well that Cathy and Heathcliff never really existed? But there is an additional point that I might have made, and which needs to be made whenever religion is given credit for, say, the Sistine Chapel or Raphael’s Annunciation. Even great artists have to earn a living, and they will take commissions where they are to be had. I have no reason to doubt that Raphael and Michelangelo were Christians—it was pretty much the only option in their time—but the fact is almost incidental. Its enormous wealth had made the Church the dominant patron of the arts. If history had worked out differently, and Michelangelo had been commissioned to paint a ceiling for a giant Museum of Science, mightn’t he have produced something at least as inspirational as the Sistine Chapel? How sad that we shall never hear Beethoven’s Mesozoic Symphony, or Mozart’s opera The Expanding Universe. And what a shame that we are deprived of Haydn’s Evolution Oratorio—but that does not stop us from enjoying his Creation.
”
”
Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion)
“
I really admire the guy [Beethoven]. Like this Archduke Trio--he was nearly dead when he wrote it, can you believe it? What I'm trying to say is, it must be tough on you not being able to read, but it's not the end of the world. You might not be able to read, but there are things only you can do. That's what you gotta focus on--your strengths.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)
“
For a whole fortnight my mind and my fingers have been working around me like two lost souls. Homer, the Bible, Plato, Locke, Byron, Hugo, Lamertine, Chateaubriand, Beethoven, Bach, Hummel, Mozart, Weber are all around me. I study them, meditate on them, devour them with fury; besides this, I practise four to five hours a day of exercises (thirds, sixths, octaves, tremolos, repetition of notes, cadenzas, etc.). Ah! provided I don't go mad you will find me an artist!
”
”
Franz Liszt
“
Three miles from my adopted city
lies a village where I came to peace.
The world there was a calm place,
even the great Danube no more
than a pale ribbon tossed onto the landscape
by a girl’s careless hand. Into this stillness
I had been ordered to recover.
The hills were gold with late summer;
my rooms were two, plus a small kitchen,
situated upstairs in the back of a cottage
at the end of the Herrengasse.
From my window I could see onto the courtyard
where a linden tree twined skyward —
leafy umbilicus canted toward light,
warped in the very act of yearning —
and I would feed on the sun as if that alone
would dismantle the silence around me.
At first I raged. Then music raged in me,
rising so swiftly I could not write quickly enough
to ease the roiling. I would stop
to light a lamp, and whatever I’d missed —
larks flying to nest, church bells, the shepherd’s
home-toward-evening song — rushed in, and I
would rage again.
I am by nature a conflagration;
I would rather leap
than sit and be looked at.
So when my proud city spread
her gypsy skirts, I reentered,
burning towards her greater, constant light.
Call me rough, ill-tempered, slovenly— I tell you,
every tenderness I have ever known
has been nothing
but thwarted violence, an ache
so permanent and deep, the lightest touch
awakens it. . . . It is impossible
to care enough. I have returned
with a second Symphony
and 15 Piano Variations
which I’ve named Prometheus,
after the rogue Titan, the half-a-god
who knew the worst sin is to take
what cannot be given back.
I smile and bow, and the world is loud.
And though I dare not lean in to shout
Can’t you see that I’m deaf? —
I also cannot stop listening.
”
”
Rita Dove
“
I personally love the Bible. I read it all the time, in the original Greek and Hebrew; I study it; I teach it. I have done so for over thirty-five years. And I don’t plan to stop any time soon. But I don’t think the Bible is perfect. Far from it. The Bible is filled with a multitude of voices, and these voices are often at odds with one another, contradicting one another in minute details and in major issues involving such basic views as what God is like, who the people of God are, who Jesus is, how one can be in a right relationship with God, why there is suffering in the world, how we are to behave, and on and on. And I heartily disagree with the views of most of the biblical authors on one point or another. Still, in my judgment all of these voices are valuable and they should all be listened to. Some of the writers of the Bible were religious geniuses, and just as we listen to other geniuses of our tradition—Mozart and Beethoven, Shakespeare and Dickens—so we ought to listen to the authors of the Bible. But they were not inspired by God, in my opinion, any more than any other genius is. And they contradict each other all over the map.
”
”
Bart D. Ehrman (Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth)
“
If you have to run then learn from Bolt, if you have to fight watch Muhammad Ali`s jab and grab punches, if dunking with a basketball does it for you why not pull a Vince Carter or fly in like Michael Jordan , if science and evolution tickles your fancy have you read "Evolution" by Charles Darwin?
Well, Like Martin Luther king said " If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well."
So pickup that broom , get started and stop complaining!
”
”
Victor Manan
“
It's evident that with Beethoven the Romantic Revolution had already begun, bringing with it the new Artist, the artist as Priest and Prophet. This new creator had a new self-image: he felt himself possessed of divine rights, of almost Napoleonic powers and liberties — especially the liberty to break rules and make new ones, to invent new forms and concepts, all in the name of greater expressivity. His mission was to lead the way to a new aesthetic world, confident that history would follow his inspirational leadership. And so there exploded onto the scene Byron, Jean Paul, Delacroix, Victor Hugo, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Schumann, Chopin, Berlioz — all proclaiming new freedoms.
Where music was concerned, the new freedoms affected formal structures, harmonic procedures, instrumental color, melody, rhythm — all of these were part of a new expanding universe, at the center of which lay the artist's personal passions. From the purely phonological point of view, the most striking of these freedoms was the new chromaticism, now employing a vastly enriched palette, and bringing with it the concomitant enrichment of ambiguity. The air was now filled with volcanic, chromatic sparks. More and more the upper partials of the harmonic series were taking on an independence of their own, playing hide-and-seek with their sober diatonic elders, like defiant youngsters in the heyday of revolt.
”
”
Leonard Bernstein (The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard)
“
If you have to run then learn from Bolt, if you have to fight watch Muhammad Ali`s jab and grab punches, if dunking with a basketball does it for you why not pull a Vince Carter or fly in like Michael Jordan , if science and evolution tickles your fancy have you read "Evolution" by Charles Darwin?
Well, Like Martin Luther king said " If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well."
So pickup that broom , get started and stop complaining!
”
”
Victor Manan Nyambala
“
因为克利斯朵夫在青年成长的途中,而青年成长的途程就是一段混沌、暧昧、矛盾、骚乱的历史。顽强的意志,簇新的天才,被更趋顽强的和年代久远的传统与民族性拘囚在樊笼里。它得和社会奋斗,和过去的历史奋斗,更得和人类固有的种种根性奋斗。一个人唯有在这场艰苦的战争中得胜,才能打破青年期的难关而踏上成人的大道。
”
”
傅雷 (约翰·克利斯朵夫(全2册)(傅雷经典译本) (Chinese Edition))
“
I close my eyes with the blessed consciousness that I have left one shining track upon the earth.” —Ludwig van Beethoven
”
”
Allison Task (Morning Motivation: Inspirational Quotes Start Your Day with Positivity)
“
Beethoven and Paul McCartney cited dreams as the spark behind some of their musical compositions (including McCartney’s famous “Yesterday”). Some of the most recognizable sequences in film—sections of Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, Fellini’s 8 ½, Richard Linklater’s Waking Life—are translations of the directors’ dreams. Mary Shelley credited dreams with inspiring Frankenstein; E. B. White with Stuart Little.
”
”
Alice Robb (Why We Dream: The Transformative Power of Our Nightly Journey)
“
Which it literally could be. Many of history’s greatest thinkers, leaders, scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs found some of their greatest inspiration going for walks. Beethoven used to take walks carrying blank pages of sheet music and a pencil. The Romantic poet William Wordsworth used to write as he took walks around a lake where he lived. Ancient Greek philosophers like Aristotle would lecture their students while taking long walks with them, often working out their ideas at the same time. Two thousand years later, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would say, “It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.” Einstein refined many of his theories about the universe while walking around the Princeton University campus. The writer Henry David Thoreau would say, “The moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.
”
”
Arnold Schwarzenegger (Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life)
“
Sometimes people claim they don't need a crutch like Jesus, but he's not a crutch, he's a teacher. If you want to be a writer, you read the classics. If you want to make great music you listen to music that's been made by great musicians who have gone before. If you're studying to be a painter, it's a good idea to study the great masters. If Picasso came into your room while you were learning to draw and said 'Hi, I have a couple of hours would you like some hints?' would you say no? So it is with spiritual masters: Jesus, Buddha or any other enlightened being. They're geniuses in the way they used their minds and hearts just as Beethoven was a genius with music, or Shakespeare a genius with words. Why not learn from them, follow their lead, study what they were doing right.
”
”
Marianne Williamson
“
Beethoven’s music has changed my life. What has it given me? It has given me not only inspiration and hope, but a visceral way to work through my own neurotic conflicts—a path through my own inner tangles. Every time I play his sonata, I touch a part of myself that nothing else can reach. And afterward, I have the distinct feeling of having been sorted out.
”
”
Stephen Cope (The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling)
“
The contemporary music of Tina Turner might make you feel powerful and energized. South African music provides a mind-boggling choice of styles from folk tunes to jive. Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony has the magical ability to transport you to a country scene and trap you in a driving rain storm.
”
”
Jason Harvey (Achieve Anything In Just One Year: Be Inspired Daily to Live Your Dreams and Accomplish Your Goals)
“
Roll over on your side. I would like to cuddle up with someone who is exceedingly pretty and worth some tender regard.” “So I might be inspired to whisper confidences to you?” Ellen asked, shifting carefully in the hammock. Val waited for her to get situated then rolled to his side and began stroking his hand over her shoulders, neck, and back. “The boys said you were not your most sanguine today.” Val felt the tension particularly across her shoulders, exactly where his own usually ached when he’d finished a good round of Beethoven. “Have you confidences to share?” “I do not. You will put me to sleep if you keep that up.” “Then you can dream of me, and I will dream of you—and vegetables.” “Vegetables?” Ellen quirked a glance at him over her shoulder. “Green beans, tomatoes, peppers, you know the kind.” Val kissed her nape. “Fruit helps, but I am beside myself with longing for vegetables. I could write a little rhapsody to the buttered green bean, so great is my torment.” “I understand this torment.” Ellen rolled her shoulders. “By the end of June, I am practically sleeping in my vegetable patch, so desperately do I want that first bowl of crisp, ripe beans. Mine are almost ready.” “And what about you?” Val kissed her nape again. “Are you ready?” His
”
”
Grace Burrowes (The Virtuoso (Duke's Obsession, #3; Windham, #3))
“
The very qualities that make music so tempting to write about are the ones that make it impossible to write about. No other art form is quite so defiantly abstract. It inspires the most intense feelings, but these feelings are difficult to describe, and more so to explain. Unlike words or images, our relationship to sounds is one we barely understand.
”
”
Jonathan Biss (Beethoven's Shadow)
“
Challenge, to Beethoven, was inspirational: the more difficult a problem, the more it excited him. “Difficulty is beautiful, good, great.” In the congenial world of music theory, this led to beauty and order.
”
”
Edmund Morris (Beethoven: The Universal Composer (Eminent Lives))
“
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.
”
”
Robert Anton Wilson (The New Inquisition: Irrational Rationalism and the Citadel of Science)
“
allowed them to rise to such heights? Most people would answer along the lines of “extraordinary inherent talent.” And they would be wrong. - - - Call in the inspired bard, Demodocus. God has given the man the gift of song. That’s one of the many god-given gifts of characters in the Odyssey. We’ve learned much since it was written—we’ve decoded human DNA and discovered our place in the universe—but we still marvel at the abilities of geniuses in the same way as the ancient Greeks did. Whether we listen to a sonata of Beethoven’s, watch highlight reels of Michael Jordan, or learn a law of Newton’s, we view extraordinary human
”
”
Sean Patrick (Alexander the Great: The Macedonian Who Conquered the World)