Great Throughts Treasury

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

"Now you can help me to find a wife. If you find a beautiful woman in F. who, mayhap, endows my music with a sigh,?but she must be no Elise Burger?make a provisional engagement. But she must be beautiful, for I can love only the beautiful; otherwise I might love myself."

"O God! What glory in the Woodland. On the Heights is Peace,-- Peace to serve Him--"

"Of Emanuel Bach's clavier works I have only a few, yet they must be not only a real delight to every true artist, but also serve him for study purposes; and it is for me a great pleasure to play works that I have never seen, or seldom see, for real art lovers."

"O God! send your glance into beautiful nature and comfort your moody thoughts touching that which must be."

"O Providence! vouchsafe me one day of pure joy! Long has the echo of perfect felicity been absent from my heart. When O, when, O Thou Divine One, shall I feel it again in nature's temple and man's? Never? Ah! that would be too hard!"

"One must be something if one wishes to put on appearances."

"One must not hold one's self so divine as to be unwilling occasionally to make improvements in one's creations."

"O ye men, who think or declare me to be hostile, morose or misanthropical, what injustice ye do me. Ye know not the secret cause of what thus appears to you. My heart and mind were from childhood disposed for the tender feelings of benevolence; I was always wishing to accomplish great deeds."

"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!"

"On the whole, the carrying out of several voices in strict relationship mutually hinders their progress."

"One must not flee for protection to poverty against the loss of riches, nor to a lack of friendship against the loss of friends, nor by abstention from procreation against the death of children, but to reason against everything."

"One must not measure the cost of the useful."

"Only the artist, or the free scholar, carries his happiness within him."

"Only the praise of one who has enjoyed praise can give pleasure."

"Only the pure in heart can make a good soup."

"Our Time stands in need of powerful minds who will scourge these petty, malicious and miserable scoundrels,?much as my heart resents doing injury to a fellow man."

"Patience, they tell me, I must now choose for a guide. I have done so. It shall be my resolve, lastingly, I hope, to endure until it pleases the implacable Parca: to break the thread. There may be improvement,?perhaps not,?I am prepared."

"Perhaps the only thing that looks like genius about me is that my affairs are not always in the best of order, and that in this respect nobody can be of help but myself."

"Perfect the ear trumpets as far as possible, and then travel; this you owe to yourself, to mankind and to the Almighty! Only thus can you develop all that is still locked within you;?and a little court,?a little chapel,?writing the music and having it performed to the glory of the Almighty, the Eternal, the Infinite?-"

"Plaudite, amici, comedia finita est. (Applaud, my friends, the comedy is over.)"

"Pity that I do not understand the art of war as well as I do the art of music; I should yet conquer Napoleon!"

"Prince, what you are you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am through my own efforts. There have been thousands of princes and will be thousands more; there is only one Beethoven!"

"Prince, what you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am of myself. There are and there will be thousands of princes. There is only one Beethoven."

"Prince, you are you by accident of birth; what I am, I am of myself. There are and there will be thousands of princes. There is only one Beethoven."

"Read Shakespeare's 'Tempest.' [An answer to Schindler's question as to what poetical conceit underlay the sonatas in F minor]"

"Recommend virtue to your children, that alone - not wealth - can give happiness. It upholds in adversity and the thought of it and my art prevents me from putting an end to my life."

"Pure church music ought to be performed by voices only, except a 'Gloria,' or some similar text. For this reason I prefer Palestrina; but it is folly to imitate him without having his genius and religious views; it would be difficult, if not impossible, too, for the singers of today to sing his long notes in a sustained and pure manner."

"Recommend virtue to your children; that, alone can bring happiness; not wealth,?I speak from experience. It was virtue alone that bore me up in my misery; to her and my art I owe that I did not end my life by self-murder."

"Rest assured that you are dealing with a true artist who likes to be paid decently, it is true, but who loves his own reputation and also the fame of his art; who is never satisfied with himself and who strives continually to make even greater progress in his art."

"Religion and thorough-bass are settled things concerning which there should be no disputing."

"Rigorists, and devotees of antiquity, relegate the perfect fourth to the list of dissonances. Tastes differ. To my ear it gives not the least offence combined with other tones."

"Rossini is a talented and a melodious composer, his music suits the frivolous and sensuous spirit of the times, and his productivity is such that he needs only as many weeks as the Germans do years to write an opera."

"Rossini would have become a great composer if his teacher had frequently applied some blows ad posteriora."

"See, my dear Hummel, the birthplace of Haydn. I received it as a gift today, and it gives me great pleasure. A mean peasant hut, in which so great a man was born!"

"Say all conceivable pretty things to Cherubini,?that there is nothing I so ardently desire as that we should soon get another opera from him, and that of all our contemporaries I have the highest regard for him."

"Rossini would have been a great composer if his teacher had spanked him enough on the backside."

"Show me the course where at the goal there stands the palm of victory! Lend sublimity to my loftiest thoughts, bring to them truths that shall live forever!"

"Schiller's poems are difficult to set to music. The composer must be able to rise far above the poet. Who can do that in the case of Schiller? In this respect Goethe is much easier."

"Since that summer in Carlsbad I read Goethe every day,?when I read at all."

"Sensual enjoyment without a union of soul is bestial and will always remain bestial."

"Show your power, Fate! We are not our own masters; what is decided must be,?and so be it!"

"Sinfonia Pastorella. He who has ever had a notion of country life can imagine for himself without many superscriptions what the composer is after. Even without a description the whole, which is more sentiment than tone painting, will be recognized."

"So far as mistakes are concerned it was never necessary for me to learn thorough-bass; my feelings were so sensitive from childhood that I practiced counterpoint without knowing that it must be so or could be otherwise."

"That you are going to publish Sebastian Bach's works is something which does good to my heart, which beats in love of the great and lofty art of this ancestral father of harmony; I want to see them soon."

"The bad habit, which has clung to me from childhood, of always writing down a musical thought which occurs to me, good or bad, has often been harmful to me."

"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."

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

"The best thing to do not to think of your malady is to keep occupied."

"The Bohemians are born musicians. The Italians ought to take them as models. What have they to show for their famous conservatories? Behold! their idol, Rossini! If Dame Fortune had not given him a pretty talent and amiable melodies by the bushel, what he learned at school would have brought him nothing but potatoes for his big belly."