Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.

The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, “Thus far and no farther.”

Only the pure in heart can make a good soup.

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!

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.

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

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?

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.

Anyone who tells a lie has not a pure heart, and cannot make a good soup.

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

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.

Friends applaud, the comedy is over.

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

Recommend to your children virtue; that alone can make them happy, not gold.

Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

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

Music is mediator between spiritual and sensual life.

A great poet is the most precious jewel of a nation.