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You Ask Me Where I Get My Ideas. That I Cannot Tell You With Certainty. They Come Unsummoned, Directly, Indirectly - I Could Seize Them With My Hands - Out In The Open Air, In The Woods, While Walking, In The Silence Of The Nights, At Dawn, Excited By Moods Which Are Translated By The Poet Into Words, By Me Into Tones That Sound And Roar And Storm About Me Till I Have Set Them Down In Notes.

-Ludwig Van Beethoven

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You Ask Me Where

Ludwig Van Beethoven

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You Ask Me Where I Get My Ideas. That I Cannot Tell You With Certainty. They Come Unsummoned, Directly, Indirectly - I Could Seize Them With My Hands - Out In The Open Air, In The Woods, While Walking, In The Silence Of The Nights, At Dawn, Excited By Moods Which Are Translated By The Poet Into Words, By Me Into Tones That Sound And Roar And Storm About Me Till I Have Set Them Down In Notes.

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Whoever Tells A Lie Is Not Pure Of Heart, And Such A Person Can Not Cook A Clean Soup.

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He Who Understand My Music Will Remain Free From The Miseries That The Other Men Are Dragging With Them .

Tones Sound, And Roar And Storm About Me Until I Have Set Them Down In Notes.

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But What A Humiliation For Me When Someone Standing Next To Me Heard A Flute In The Distance And I Heard Nothing, Or Someone Standing Next To Me Heard A Shepherd Singing And Again I Heard Nothing. Such Incidents Drove Me Almost To Despair; A Little More Of That And I Would Have Ended My Life - It Was Only My Art That Held Me Back.

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Existence Of Life

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Artists Are Fiery; They Do Not Weep.

Music Is A Higher Revelation Than All Wisdom And Philosophy.

Life Would Be Flat Without Music. It Is The Background To All I Do. It Speaks To The Heart In Its Own Special Way Like Nothing Else.

Only The Flint Of A Man's Mind Can Strike Fire In Music.

Don't Regard Yourself As Too Divine To Improve, Occasionally, Your Own Works.

If I Contemplate Myself As Part Of The Universe: What Am I?

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I Shall Hear In Heaven.

There Is No Greater Pleasure For Me Than To Practice And Exhibit My Art.

Oh You Men Who Think Or Say That I Am Malevolent, Stubborn, Or Misanthropic, How Greatly Do You Wrong Me. You Do Not Know The Secret Cause Which Makes Me Seem That Way To You. Oh How Harshly Was I Flung Back By The Doubly Sad Experience Of My Bad Hearing.

Music Is Mediator Between Spiritual And Sensual Life.

I Liked Your Opera. I Think I Will Set It To Music.

I Will Seize Fate By The Throat; It Shall Certainly Never Wholly Overcome Me.

Music Is Indeed The Mediator Between The Spiritual And The Sensual Life.

I Can Do Nothing But Think Of You... What Have You Done To Me? Can't You Remove The Spell You Have Cast Over Me?

It Seemed Unthinkable For Me To Leave The World Forever Before I Had Produced All That I Felt Called Upon To Produce

Yet It Was Impossible For Me To Say To People, 'speak Louder, Shout, For I Am Deaf.' Ah, How Could I Possibly Admit An Infirmity In The One Sense Which Ought To Be More Perfect In Me Than Others, A Sense Which I Once Possessed In The Highest Perfection, A Perfection Such As Few In My Profession Enjoy Or Ever Have Enjoyed.

The Amount Of Money One Needs Is Terrifying.

Nothing Is More Intolerable Than To Have To Admit To Yourself Your Own Errors.

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.

Händel Is The Greatest And Ablest Of All Composers; From Him I Can Still Learn.

Hide Your Secret Even From The Closest Friend; Learn To Be Silent.

Closest Friends

One Must Not Hold One's Self So Divine As To Be Unwilling Occasionally To Make Improvements In One's Creations.

It Is The Power Of Music To Carry One Directly Into The Mental State Of The Composer.

In The World Of Art, As In The Whole Of Creation, Freedom And Progress Are The Main Objectives.

Men Are Not Only Together When They Are With Each Other; Even The Distant And The Dead Live With Us.

To Play Without Passion Is Inexcusable!

I Can Live Only Wholly With You Or Not At All.

Art Always Demands Of Us Something New.

I Shall Seize Fate By The Throat.

Of All My Children, This Is The One That Cost Me The Worst Birth-pangs And Brought Me The Most Sorrow; And For That Reason It Is The One Most Dear To Me.

Music Should Strike Fire From The Heart Of Man, And Bring Tears From The Eyes Of Woman.

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