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Beethoven Quotes

Browse 26 quotes about Beethoven.

Beethoven Quotes

“Jeremy Bentham startled the world many years ago by stating in effect that if the amount of pleasure obtained from each be equal there is nothing to choose between poetry and push-pin. Since few people now know what push-pin is, I may explain that it is a child's game in which one player tries to push his pin across that of another player, and if he succeeds and then is able by pressing down on the two pins with the ball of his thumb to lift them off the table he wins possession of his opponent's pin. [...] The indignant retort to Bentham's statement was that spiritual pleasures are obviously higher than physical pleasures. But who say so? Those who prefer spiritual pleasures. They are in a miserable minority, as they acknowledge when they declare that the gift of aesthetic appreciation is a very rare one. The vast majority of men are, as we know, both by necessity and choice preoccupied with material considerations. Their pleasures are material. They look askance at those who spent their lives in the pursuit of art. That is why they have attached a depreciatory sense to the word aesthete, which means merely one who has a special appreciation of beauty. How are we going to show that they are wrong? How are we going to show that there is something to choose between poetry and push-pin? I surmise that Bentham chose push-pin for its pleasant alliteration with poetry. Let us speak of lawn tennis. It is a popular game which many of us can play with pleasure. It needs skill and judgement, a good eye and a cool head. If I get the same amount of pleasure out of playing it as you get by looking at Titian's 'Entombment of Christ' in the Louvre, by listening to Beethoven's 'Eroica' or by reading Eliot's 'Ash Wednesday', how are you going to prove that your pleasure is better and more refined than mine? Only, I should say, by manifesting that this gift you have of aesthetic appreciation has a moral effect on your character.”

PleasureEliotUtilitarianismBeethovenGeorge EliotLudwig Van BeethovenTitianJeremy BenthamBenthem
Book:Vagrant Mood
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“Modern man is full of platitudes about living life to its fullest, with catchy keychain phrases and little plaques for kitchen walls. But if you've never retreated to the solitude of a dark room and listened to Beethoven's Ninth from start to finish, you know nothing. For music is a transcendental exploration of human emotion and experience, the very fabric of life in its purest form. And the Ninth our greatest musical achievement.”

LifeJoyMusicSymphonyClassical MusicBeethoven
Author:Tiffany Madison
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“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...”

LoveLifeFreedomMoneyOpinionSecurityWorkersPoliticiansTeachersDiplomatsBachBeethoven
Book:Listen, Little Man!
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“Somewhere, the radio was playing—WCRB again, soft classical. I didn’t register it at first. I was too busy putting my keys down, toeing off my shoes, breathing into the hush. But then the melody changed. Piano. Slow. Familiar. It was Adagio cantabile. Not Joel’s version, with its doo-wop backbone and lovesick harmonies. Beethoven’s. The real thing.”

MusicMemoryBeethovenBilly Joel
Book:Comings and Goings - The Art of Being Seen : A Jim Garraty Story
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“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.”

InspirationalReadingComposerBeethoven
Book:Kafka on the Shore
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“Do you perambulate at dawn? The acacia on your right and the jacaranda on the road down the lane. Mornings in Kathmandu are symphonies. Tchaikovsky on a Monday, and Beethoven on a Saturday. What voices speak to you? Some days I hear the ghosts of extinct bees, and some days I hear the spirits of butterflies. Today morning I read fragments from the writings of Kafka. Have you read the writings of Kierkegaard?”

BeesButterfliesMorningsTchaikovskyBeethovenAcaciaJacarandaKathmandu
Author:Avijeet Das
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“Just as it was not necessary for Beethoven to know the science of the physical manufacture of the instruments in his orchestra in order for him to compose, it is not necessary for you to understand vortex based mathematics, fractal field theory, dodecahedrons, geometric solids, calculus, Fibonacci series, centripetal force, and quantum physics in order to become enlightened.”

EnlightenmentMathematicsQuantum PhysicsVortexFractalsBeethovenMagickal StudiesDodecahedrons
Book:666: Connection with Crowley
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“Well, what do you think? Avanti?" "Avanti," cries everyone, and, after a few quick re-tunings of our instruments, and re-initialisings of our hearts, we enter the slow theme-and-variations movement. How good it is to pay this quintet, to play it, not to work at it - to play for our own joy, with no need to convey anything to anyone outside our ring of recreation, with no expectation of a future stage, of the too-immediate sop of applause. The quintet exists without us yet cannot exist without us. It sings to us, we sing into it, and somehow, through these little black and white insects clustering along five thin lines, the man who deafly transfigured what he so many years earlier had hearingly composed speaks into us across land and water and ten generations, and fills us here with sadness, here with amazed delight.”

MusicBeethovenQuintet
Book:An Equal Music
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“Beethoven introduced us to anger. Haydn taught us capriciousness, Rachmaninoff melancholy. Wagner was demonic. Bach was pious. Schumann was mad, and because his genius was able to record his fight for sanity, we heard what isolation and the edge of lunacy sounded like. Liszt was lusty and vigorous and insisted that we confront his overwhelming sexuality as well as our own. Chopin was a poet, and without him we never would have understood what night was, what perfume was, what romance was.”

MusicBeethovenClassicalSchumannChopinComposers
Book:The Wild Rose
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“Parece obvio pero vale la pena recordarlo: antes de Beethoven, no había Beethoven. Su trabajo generó un concepto de música que antes no existía. En sus obras se ofrece el raro espectáculo de cuando una idea sale de la nada y deviene. Es el milagro de la «primera vez», cuando el enigma de un acontecimiento inédito provoca el surgir de un nombre. Hay mil cosas con las que, ahora, pega un término como nostalgia. Pero hay que imaginar la primera vez que apareció algo tan incurable que requirió la sutura de un nombre nuevo.”

MúsicaBeethoven
Author:Baricco, Alessandro
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“Težina, nužnost i vrijednost tri su međusobno povezana pojma: teško je samo ono što je neophodno, samo ono što je teško ima vrijednost. To se uvjerenje rodilo iz Beethovenove glazbe, pa iako je moguće (čak vjerojatno) da su za njega odgovorni više Beethovenovi izdavači nego sam kompozitor, danas ga dijelimo manje-više svi. Veličina čovjeka za nas je u tome što nosi svoju sudbinu kao što Atlas nosi na ramenima nebeski svod. Beethovenov junak je dizač metaforičkih tereta.”

BeethovenVrijednostTežinaNužnost
Author:Milan Kundera
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“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.”

ScienceConsciousnessBeautyExperienceAweVan GoghBeethovenVincent Van GoghLudwig Van Beethoven
Book:The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning
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“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.”

ChoicesChristAttentionChristianityTeachFocusDreamsInspireDanceGoalsActivismDream BigGiftsExcusesTalentsGandhiServeJourneysInventLeonardo Da VinciMother TeresaBeethovenDestinationsMichelangeloPushing YourselfHelen KellerProcastinationStop SettlingCopeoutsCreate MusicWrite Books
Author:Shannon L. Alder
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