Excerpt from Beethoven Let them then gather around themselves the heroic friends of the past - the great souls who suffered for the good of universal humanity. The lives of great men are not written for the proud or for the ambitious; they are dedicated rather to the unhappy. And who really' is not? To those who suffer, we offer the balm of their sacred sufferings. No one is alone in the fight. The darkness of the world is made clear by the guiding light of the souls of the heroes. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.