d child, to end my earthly career somewhere among good
people."

(October 6, 1802, to Wegeler.)

167. "O ye men, who think or declare me to be hostile, morose or
misanthropical, what injustice ye do me. Ye know not the secret cause of
what thus appears to you. My heart and mind were from childhood
disposed for the tender feelings of benevolence; I was always wishing to
accomplish great deeds."

(October 6, 1802, in the so-called Heiligenstadt Will.)

168. "Divinity, thou lookest into my heart, thou knowest it, thou
knowest that love for mankind and a desire to do good have their abode
there. O ye men, when one day ye read this think that ye have wronged
me, and may the unfortunate console himself with the thought that he has
found one of his kind who, despite all the obstacles which nature put in
his path, yet did all in his power to be accepted in the ranks of worthy
artists and men!"

(From the Heiligenstadt Will.)

169. "I spend all my mornings with the muses;--and they bless me also in
my walks."

(October 12, 1835, to his nephew Karl.)

170. "Concerning myself nothing,--that is, from nothing nothing."

(October 19, 1815, to Countess Erdody.)

[A possible allusion to the line, "Nothing can come of nothing." from
Shakespeare's "King Lear," Act 1, scene 1]

171. "Beethoven can write, thank God; but do nothing else on earth."

(December 22, 1822, to Ferdinand Ries, in London.)

172. "Mentally I often frame an answer, but when I come to write it down
I generally throw the pen aside, since I am not able to write what I
feel."

(October 7, 1826, to his friend Wegeler, in Coblenz. "The better sort
of people, I think, know me anyhow." He is excusing his laziness in
letter-writing.)

173. "I have the gift to conceal my sensitiveness touching a multitude
of things; but when I am provoked at a moment when I am more sensitive
than usual to anger, I burst out more violently than anybody else."

(July 24, 1804, to Ries, in reporting to him a quarrel with Stephan von
Breuning.)

174. "X. is completely changed since I threw half a dozen books at her
head. Perhaps something of their contents accidentally got into her head
or her wicked heart."

(To Mme. Streicher, who often had to put Beethoven's house in order.)

175. "I can have no intercourse, and do not want to have any, with
persons who are not willing to believe in me becau