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

"I live only in my music, and I have scarcely begun a work when I am already thinking of the next."

"I shall remain a bachelor all my life, as I have found no one who understands me."

"I am a composer, not a politician."

"Ah how could I possibly admit such an infirmity in the one sense which should have been more perfect in me than in others[?]"