Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.
I joyfully hasten to meet death. If it come before I have had opportunity to develop all my artistic faculties, it will come, my hard fate notwithstanding, too soon, and I should probably wish it later - yet even then I shall be happy, for will it not deliver me from a state of endless suffering?
Interpretation
What this quote means
Beethoven expresses a willingness to face death, seeing it as a release from suffering despite a desire to fulfill his artistic potential.
In this quote, Beethoven reflects on his relationship with death and suffering. He acknowledges the inevitability of death and expresses a joy in meeting it, yet he also conveys a wish to achieve his artistic ambitions. The paradox of wanting to live longer for artistic development while also recognizing that death would free him from enduring pain showcases the deep emotional and philosophical struggle he experienced as an artist.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of pursuing one's passions, this quote can be used to highlight the connection between art and the human experience.
More from Ludwig Van Beethoven
All quotes →I alter some things, eliminate and try again until I am satisfied. Then begins the mental working out of this material in its breadth, its narrowness, its height and depth.
Often, I can scarcely hear any one speaking to me; the tones yes, but not the actual words; yet as soon as any one shouts, it is unbearable. What will come of all this, heaven only knows!
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.
I carry my thoughts about me for a long time, often a very long time, before I write them down; meanwhile my memory is so faithful that I am sure never to forget, not even in years, a theme that has once occurred to me.
Recommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience.
Similar quotes
There is no thing that with a twist of the imagination cannot be something else. Porpoises risen in a green sea, the wind at nightfall bending the rose- red grasses and you- in your apron hurrying to catch- say it seems to you to be your son. How ridiculous! You will pass up into a cloud and look back at me, not count the scribbling foolish that put wings at your heels, at your knees.
Of course, music is an art form, and it's not all that competitive. But we don't ever intend to be the second-best band on a stage at any show.
Poetry is the deification of reality.
If there's specific resistance to women making movies, I just choose to ignore that as an obstacle for two reasons: I can't change my gender, and I refuse to stop making movies.
Looking up in the sky, I saw the stars were brighter now. They made a pattern I had never noticed before- a gleaming constellation that looked a lot like a girls figure- a girl with a bow, running across the sky. "Let the world honor you, my Huntress. Live forever in the stars.
Bottom line, I have to follow what my soul says, or my spirit. And my spirit said that poetry and the arts should be without borders, should be without political borders.