Beethoven, the Man and the Artist, as Revealed in His Own Words

by Ludwig van Beethoven

(August 15, 1812, to Bettina von Arnim.)

259. “Man, help yourself!”

(Written under the words: “Fine, with the help of God,” which Moscheles
had written at the end of a pianoforte arrangement of a portion of
“Fidelio.”)

260. “If I could give as definite expression to my thoughts about my illness as to my thoughts in music, I would soon help myself.”

(September, 1812, to Amalie Sebald, a patient at the cure in Teplitz.)

261. “Follow the advice of others only in the rarest cases.”

(Diary, 1816.)

262. “The moral law in us, and the starry sky above us.”—Kant.

(Conversation-book, February, 1820.)

[Literally the passage in Kant’s “Critique of Practical Reason” reads as follows: “Two things fill the soul with ever new and increasing wonder and reverence the oftener the mind dwells upon them:—the starry sky above me and the moral law in me.”]