Figured Bass (Harmony) and Religion are self-contained things, one should not argue these.

I change many things, discard others, and try again and again until I am satisfied; then, in my head, I being to elaborate the work in its breadth, its narrowness, its height, its depth...I hear and see the image in front of me from every angle as if it had been cast and only the labour of writing it down remains.

What is to reach the heart must come from above; if it does not come from thence, it will be nothing but notes, body without spirit.

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.

He who understand my music will remain free from the miseries that the other men are dragging with them .

Music is mediator between spiritual and sensual life.

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.