(In a communication to his friend, Baron Zmeskall.)

179. "I, too, am a king!"

(Said to Holz, when the latter begged him not to sell the ring
which King Frederick William III, of Prussia, had sent to him
instead of money or an order in return for the dedication of the
ninth symphony. "Master, keep the ring," Holz had said, "it is
from a king." Beethoven made his remark "with indescribable
dignity and self-consciousness.")

[On his deathbed he said to little Gerhard von Breuning: "Know
that I am an artist."]

[At the height of the popular infatuation for Rossini (1822) he
said to his friends: "Well, they will not be able to rob me of my
place in the history of art."]

180. "Prince, what you are you are by accident of birth; what I
am, I am through my own efforts. There have been thousands of
princes and will be thousands more; there is only one Beethoven!"

(According to tradition, from a letter which he wrote to Prince
Lichnowsky when the latter attempted to persuade him to play for
some French officers on his estate in Silesia. Beethoven went at
night to Troppau, carrying the manuscript of the (so-called)
"Appassionata" sonata, which suffered from the rain.)

181. "My nobility is here, and here (pointing to his heart and