Об образовании

Из книги: Beethoven, the Man and the Artist, As Revealed in His Own Words by Ludwig van Beethoven:1

149. "Like the State, each man must have his own constitution."2

150. "Recommend virtue to your children; that, alone can bring happiness; not wealth,—I speak from experience. It was virtue alone that bore me up in my misery; to her and my art I owe that I did not end my life by self-murder."3

151. "I know no more sacred duty than to rear and educate a child."4

152. "Nature's weaknesses are nature's endowments; reason, the guide, must seek to lead and lessen them."5

153. "It is man's habit to hold his fellow man in esteem because he committed no greater errors."6

154. "There is nothing more efficient in enforcing obedience upon others than the belief on their part that you are wiser than they...Without tears fathers can not inculcate virtue in their children, or teachers learning and wisdom in their pupils; even the laws, by compelling tears from the citizens, compel them also to strive for justice."7

155. "It is only becoming in a youth to combine his duties toward education and advancement with those which he owes to his benefactor and supporter; this I did toward my parents."8

156. "You can not honor the memory of your father better than to continue your studies with the greatest zeal, and strive to become an honest and excellent man."9

157. "Let your conduct always be amiable; through art and science the best and noblest of men are bound together and your future vocation will not exclude you."10

158. "It is very true that a drop will hollow a stone; a thousand lovely impressions are obliterated when children are placed in wooden institutions while they might receive from their parents the most soulful impressions which would continue to exert their influence till the latest age."11

159. "Drops of water wear away a stone in time, not by force but by continual falling. Only through tireless industry are the sciences achieved so that one can truthfully say: no day without its line,—nulla dies sine linea."12

  • 1. Компиляция высказываний Бетховена составлена Фридрихом Керстом (Friedrich Kerst), английский перевод осуществлен Генри Эдвардом Кребилем (Henry Edward Krehbiel) и опубликован в 1905 г. под названием “Beethoven: the Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words” (New York: B.W. Huebsch.).
  • 2. Diary, 1815.
  • 3. October 6, 1802, to his brothers Karl and Johann [the so-called Heiligenstadt Will].
  • 4. January 7, 1820, in a communication to the Court of Appeals in the suit touching the guardianship of his nephew Karl.
  • 5. Diary, 1817.
  • 6. May 6, 1811, to Breitkopf and Hartel, in a letter complaining of faulty printing in some of his compositions.
  • 7. Diary, 1815.
  • 8. May 19, 1825, to his nephew Karl.
  • 9. To his nephew, 1816-18.
  • 10. Baden, July 18, 1825, to his nephew, who had decided to become a merchant.
  • 11. Diary, spring of 1817. Beethoven was dissatisfied with Giannatasio's school in which he had placed his nephew. "Karl is a different child after he has been with me a few hours" (Diary). In 1826, after the attempt at suicide, Beethoven said to Breuning: "My Karl was in an institute; educational institutions furnish forth only hot house plants."
  • 12. 1799, in a sketch for a theoretical handbook for Archduke Rudolph.