Quotes about singing
page 5

“Well morning came, and it dressed the sky in a lovely yellow gown.
Shopping malls are opening in that narrow hallway of downtown,
filled with people who are shopping for their lovers and their friends,
singing "I won't ever be lonely again"”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

I Won't Ever be Happy Again
Insound Tour Support No.12 (2000)

Love, People, Lovers

“Indeed I have observed that even the Barbarians across the Rhine sing savage songs composed in language not unlike the croaking of harsh-voiced birds, and that they delight in such songs. For I think it is always the case that inferior musicians, though they annoy their audiences, give very great pleasure to themselves”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

Julian, on the songs of the early Germans. As quoted in his Mispogon.
General sources

Pleasure, Bird, Thinking

“I see myself in the contestants. I’m not the one to tell people, ‘You have to sing this way or that way.’ Talent is something God gave you when you were born. I don’t want to give them technical advice. I love mistakes. When talking about art, the most important thing is to not be perfect, … I want to be a fan, and to be a fan you have to conquer my heart. I don’t want to give marketing advice.”

Laura Pausini (1974) Italian singer

Los Angeles Daily News (October 16, 2014)

Love, God, People, Art

“I was raised in Germany until I was 13, and then my family decided to go back to Turkey. It was good in a way, because I studied music. And I went to a Turkish classical music school and studied music for three years. And then I just realized that I can't do anything else but singing music. And everything just happened naturally.”

Tarkan (1972) Turkish singer

Tarkan finds his moves take him across borders, CNN Worldbeat, August 9, 1999 http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/Music/9908/09/tarkan.wb/index.html,

School, Family, Music, Way

“I’ve been listening to my father’s songs lately. He was a wonderful composer; I love his songs very much. My father used to say to me, “My son Ranariddh sang my songs the best,” because you had to sing it with your own heart. I used to sing a lot. He didn't like to sing his own songs, so I used to do it.”

Norodom Ranariddh (1944) Cambodian politician

[Post Staff, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/recollections-king-father, Recollections of the King Father, 3 February 2013, 29 June 2015, Phnom Penh Post]

Love, Heart

“We are but artless folk and not expert in rhythm, time, and tune, but that does not matter. He for whom we sing our hymns understands them all, and he pays no attention to our deficiencies of execution.”

Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842–1901) Indian scholar, social reformer and author

His comment to his wife On his daily prayers he would sings devotional songs out of tune and metre. Quoted in page=104

Understanding, Time

“I say, and have always said, and will always say: the fish that does not sing throughout the whole world is a dead fish.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Merchant Gúðmúnsen
Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

World, Fish, Dead

“I talked to Paul McCartney over the years ranging from 1967 to 2004. … At the landmine show he did "God Only Knows" with me and I did "Let It Be" with him. And then I called him about four months ago asking him if he could come out and do — sing a song called "A Friend Like You," which I wrote for him, me and my collaborator wrote for him. And he said he'd love to come out. And he came to the studio and that was one of the bigger thrills of my life to tell you the truth, to produce Paul McCartney. And that was a thrill for me. That was a thrill.”

Brian Wilson (1942) American musician, singer, songwriter and record producer

CNN interview (2004)

Love, Life, God, Truth

“Paul McCartney may be the closest thing our generation has produced to Franz Schubert -- a master of melody, writing tunes anyone can sing, songs that seem to have been there all along. Most people don't realize that "Ave Maria" and "Serenade" were written by Schubert (or that his "Moment Musical in F" so resembles "Martha My Dear"). McCartney writes with similar universality. His "Yesterday" has been recorded by more musicians than any other song in history. Its stepwise melody is deceptively complex, drawing from outside the diatonic scale so smoothly that anyone can sing it, yet few theorists can agree on exactly what it is that McCartney has done.”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/31/AR2007053101848.html (June 1, 2007)

People, Music, History, Universe

“It's not easy, though, singing upside down in a headstand on a raised platform with your unfettered breasts hitting you in the chin.”

Adrienne Barbeau (1945) actress from the United States

[ISBN 0786716371, There Are Worse Things I Could Do, Barbeau, Adrienne, 79, 2006, Carroll & Graf]

“But in such a place as this, I can only tell you
by singing this song.”

Ayumi Hamasaki (1978) Japanese recording artist, lyricist, model, and actress

A Song Is Born
Lyrics, I am...

“I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. If you can, then it ain’t music, it’s close-order drill or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.”

Billie Holiday book Lady Sings the Blues

Source: Lady Sings the Blues (1956), Ch. 4.

Music, Way, Exercises, Success

“If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination… The movie has been signed by Michael Bay. This is the same man who directed The Rock in 1996. Now he has made Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Faust made a better deal.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/transformers-revenge-of-the-fallen-2009 of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (23 June 2009) Reviews, One-star reviews

Music, Imagination, Hell, Revenge

“There was music all about us, we were growing quite forgetful
We were only singing seamen from the dirt of Londontown.”

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet

Forty Singing Seamen
Poems (1906)

Music, Forgetting

“Why did you fight with my Giridhara (Kṛṣṇa)? You are a young maiden, and my Giridhara (Kṛṣṇa) is but a child, why did you hold his arm? My Giridhara (Kṛṣṇa) is crying, sobbing repeatedly, and you stand [looking at him] smirkingly! O Ahir lady (cowherd girl), you are excessively inclined to quarrel, and come and stand here uninvited." Giridhara (the poet) sings - so says Yaśodā, holding on to the hand of Giridhara (Kṛṣṇa) and covering [her face] with the end of her Sari.”

Rāmabhadrācārya (1950) Hindu religious leader

mere giridhārī jī se kāhe larī ।
tuma taruṇī mero giridhara bālaka kāhe bhujā pakarī ॥
susuki susuki mero giridhara rovata tū musukāta kharī ॥
tū ahirina atisaya jhagarāū barabasa āya kharī ॥
giridhara kara gahi kahata jasodā āŉcara oṭa karī ॥
[Nagar, Shanti Lal, The Holy Journey of a Divine Saint: Being the English Rendering of Swarnayatra Abhinandan Granth, Acharya Divakar, Sharma, Siva Kumar, Goyal, Surendra Sharma, Susila, B. R. Publishing Corporation, First, Hardback, New Delhi, India, 2002, 8176462888]
[Prasad, Ram Chandra, Sri Ramacaritamanasa The Holy Lake Of The Acts Of Rama, Motilal Banarsidass, 1999, Illustrated, reprint, Delhi, India, 8120807626, First published 1991]

Girl, Fight, Cry

“Whether we believe the Greek poet, "it is sometimes even pleasant to be mad", or Plato, "he who is master of himself has knocked in vain at the doors of poetry"; or Aristotle, "no great genius was without a mixture of insanity"; the mind cannot express anything lofty and above the ordinary unless inspired. When it despises the common and the customary, and with sacred inspiration rises higher, then at length it sings something grander than that which can come from mortal lips. It cannot attain anything sublime and lofty so long as it is sane: it must depart from the customary, swing itself aloft, take the bit in its teeth, carry away its rider and bear him to a height whither he would have feared to ascend alone.”

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

In Latin, nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit (There is no great genius without some touch of madness). This passage by Seneca is the source most often cited in crediting Aristotle with this thought, but in Problemata xxx. 1, Aristotle says: 'Why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy or politics or poetry or the arts are clearly melancholic?' The quote by Plato is from the Dialogue Phaedrus (245a).
On Tranquility of the Mind

Fear, Madness

“The person of faith, in ritual or worship, while reciting a prayer, singing a psalm, and invoking a mantra, feels deep within a communion that, like the philosopher’s stone of alchemy, transforms the lead and copper of animal existence into the silver and gold of divine delight.”

Varadaraja V. Raman (1932) American physicist

page 176
Truth and Tension in Science and Religion

Faith, Feeling, Animals, Personality

“A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them;
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Voiceless; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Music

“I went to New York. I had a dream. I wanted to be a big star. I didn’t know anybody. I wanted to dance. I wanted to sing. I wanted to do all those things. I wanted to make people happy. I wanted to be famous. I wanted everybody to love me. I wanted to be a star. I worked really hard and my dream came true.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

(Spoken at the beginning of the Virgin Tour concert video).

Love, Happiness, People, Dreams

“Nothing relieves Irish despair. The Irishman's complaint lies not with his circumstance, which might be rendered brilliant by labour or luck, but with injustice of existence itself. Death! How could a benevolent Deity gift us with life, only to set such a cruel term upon it? Irish despair knows no remedy. Love fades; fame is fleeting. The only cures are booze and sentiment. That's why the Irish are such noble drunks and glorious poets. No one sings like the Irish or mourns like them. Why? Because they're angels imprisoned in vessels of flesh.”

Steven Pressfield book Killing Rommel

Zachary Stein, p. 27
Killing Rommel (2008)

Love, Life, Death, Angels

“The music game is more than just my love for singing, its a sport for me.”

Keshia Chante (1988) Canadian actor and musician

Inside Entertainment (2008)

Love, Music, Game, Sport

“The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter I-V, Chapter I.

Suffering

“In the largest sense, every work of art is protest. … A lullaby is a propaganda song and any three-year-old knows it. … A hymn is a controversial song — sing one in the wrong church: you'll find out. …”

Pete Seeger (1919–2014) American folk singer

Pop Chronicles, Show 33 - Revolt of the Fat Angel: American musicians respond to the British invaders. Part 1 http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19792/m1/, interview recorded 2.14.1968 http://web.archive.org/web/20110615153027/http://www.library.unt.edu/music/special-collections/john-gilliland/o-s.

Art, Sense

“Some people spend their time just runnin' round in circles
Always chasing some exotic bird
I prefer to spend some time just listening for that special something
That I've never ever heard
I like a new song to sing, another show or somewhere entirely different to be
But baby you make me feel so free.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

You Make Me Feel So Free
Song lyrics, Into the Music (1979)

People, Feeling, Bird, Time

“… contrary to what many believed, my father was kind and tenderhearted, especially towards his family. His forbidding sternness seemed to melt into love, kindness, and easy familiarity when he was with us. Especially with me, his acknowledged successor to the throne, he would play lightheartedly. When we were alone together, he would sing me little songs; I don't remember his ever doing this in front of others, but when only the two of us were there, he would often sing to me.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 45
Publications, Mission for my Country (1961)

Love, Family

“I've tried to make my writing itself therapeutic—that by your act of reading it your Life Energy may be enhanced. One of the ways I have sought to achieve this is to make it singable, as best I can do. Not singable like song lyrics, rather more chantable. Encouraging you to sing along, moving with its flow, its pulse, its pulsations.”

John Diamond (doctor) (1934) Australian doctor

Source: Facets of a Diamond: Reflections of a Healer (2002), p. 286

Life, Way, Reading

“James — it's about your sister
I wonder if you missed her
I'm on my way to see you but I don't know what to bring
Almost gave up the ghost, now you have what she wants most
a little piece of heaven and a lovely song to sing.”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

"James (new original song!)" (5 July 2007) http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZQSHT2DcHoU

Love, Way, Sister

“There's always rhythm going in my mind. … I'm either singing them — June will tell you, I'm either singing them, or I have got the beat going from one, or I'm writing one.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

CNN interview (2002)

“Goodnight, my angel
Now it's time to dream.
And dream how wonderful your life will be.
Someday your child may cry
And if you sing this lullabye
Then in your heart
There will always be a part of me.

Someday we'll all be gone.
But lullabyes go on and on…
They never die.
That's how you
And I
Will be.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel).
Song lyrics, River of Dreams (1993)

Life, Dreams, Angels, Time

“To me, music is oxygen and I know that someday even if I can't sing, I can always continue listening to it.”

Shreya Ghoshal (1984) Indian playback singer

Response when asked about her likes http://www.timesofindia.com/entertainment/hindi/music/news/I-like-my-father-being-the-boss-in-my-life-Shreya/movie-review/27854121.cms?prtpage=1

Music

“Economic man and the Calvinist Christian sing to each other like voices in a fugue. The Calvinist stands alone before an almost merciless God; no human agency can help him; his church is a means to political and social organization rather than a bridge to deity, for no priest can have greater knowledge of the divine way than he himself; no friend can console him — in fact, he should distrust all men; in the same fashion, Economic Man faces a merciless world alone and unaided, his hand against every other's.”

Lionel Trilling (1905–1975) American academic

Source: Matthew Arnold (1939), Ch. 8: The Failure of the Middle Class

Men, God, World, Way

“The winter moon becomes a companion, the heart of the priest, sunk in meditation upon religion and philosophy, there in the mountain hall, is engaged in a delicate interplay and exchange with the moon; and it is this of which the poet sings.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Japan, the Beautiful and Myself (1969)

Religion, Mountain, Winter, Heart

“We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens. The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.”

Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer

As quoted in Cosmos (1980) by Carl Sagan.

Pleasure, Secret, Nature, Bird

“There was this whole thing of ‘Jack's voice breaking’ about three or four months ago, and I think I sort of laughed at the whole thing, 'cause they sort of made out like I couldn't sing anymore, and my whole life was over, which it wasn't.”

Jack Vidgen (1997) Australian singer

Today Tonight, Jack Vidgen's rising star http://au.news.yahoo.com/today-tonight/celebrity/article/-/13385033/jack-vidgens-rising-star/, 10 April, 2012.

Life, Thinking

“I save myself in a church. Dark, empty. Lights flickering before icons. One sings everything that one has sung before in the past. Some black figures - and the heart is heavy. The tears take one's breath away and the past rises up again. Home.... in Peter's office [Marianne's brother, governor of Kovno Province, Lithuania], my entire soul starts to ache for him, for that battle for everything that is sweet and good, which is called Russian life. Empty, empty in the house, no one. Whoever comes - doesn't get his fill of him. And then such a heated rush of love rips out of the [visitor's] heart, begging one's pardon and forgetting the trouble behind, that the whole house swells.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

1906 - 1911 Source: a letter to Alexej von Jawlensky, between December 1909 and Spring 1910; as quoted in 'Ambiguity of Home: Identity and Reminiscence in Marianne Werefkin's Return Home, c. 1909', Adrienne Kochman http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring06/52-spring06/spring06article/171-ambiguity-of-home-identity-and-reminiscence-in-marianne-werefkins-return-home-c-1909

Love, Life, Home, Soul

“I'll try to sing as fast as I can, I know you all can't wait to see U2.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

Glastonbury Festival, 2011
In Concert

Waiting

“In the shift from direct democracy to representational democracy, the printed book became an embodiment of thought for the physically absent author; and so the popular art form of the popular book and the pamphlet re-presented ideas and contributed to the public space of political philosophies of the Enlightenment. Television, however, now brings forth this new kind of public space, and it calls into being this new world, not of the educated citizenry in a republic, but of the electropeasantry in the state of Entertainment. Recall how people stopped singing in pubs when they brought in the TV set, and you will appreciate the new passivity in which people stop voting for their representatives as TV takes over the electoral campaigns.”

William Irwin Thompson (1938) American writer

Thompson (1991) Play, from The American Replacement of Nature.

People, Books, World, Education

“If you're in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into the shrink wherever you are, just walk in say "Shrink, You can get anything you want, at Alice's restaurant." And walk out. You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singing a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singing a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement. And that's what it is, the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around on the guitar!”

Arlo Guthrie (1947) American folk singer

Arlo has repeatedly updated this part through the years to help it match modern life more. He has updated to say that if only one person does it, they say the person in question is a certain amount of years too late. He also referenced the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy during the 40th anniversary recording. He has also started adding the phrase, "And most of them would be too young to know what a movement was." once he says, "Friends they may think it's a movement."
Alice's Restaurant Massacree

People, Imagination, Thinking, Time

“What would dawn have been like, had you awakened? It would have sung through your bones. All I can do this morning is let it sing through mine.”

Diane Ackerman (1948) Author, poet, naturalist

Silence and Awakening
The Inevitable: Contemporary Writer Confront Death (2011) Edited by David Shields & Bradford Morrow

“If thou would'st have me sing and play
As once I play'd and sung,
First take this time-worn lute away,
And bring one freshly strung.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

If Thou would'st have Me sing and play.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Time

“I had different views in the '70s. As a human being, I've learned… I have more culture now. I was dumb as a rock when I wrote 'Okie from Muskogee'. That's being honest with you at the moment, and a lot of things that I said … I sing with a different intention now. My views on marijuana have totally changed. I think we were brainwashed and I think anybody that doesn't know that needs to get up and read and look around, get their own information. It's a cooperative government project to make us think marijuana should be outlawed.”

Merle Haggard (1937–2016) American country music song writer, singer and musician

As quoted in "Merle Haggard - Branded man", in No Depression magazine (31 October 2003) http://nodepression.com/article/merle-haggard-branded-man

Thinking, Learning, Change, Reading

“What guides us is children's response, their joy in learning to dance, to sing, to live together. It should be a guide to the whole world.”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

Source: Tessa Souter Anything I Can Do... You Can Do Better: How to unlock your creative dreams and change your life http://books.google.co.in/books?id=GJzWPzwI79kC&pg=PA156, Random House, 31 July 2011, p. 156

Children, World, Learning, Joy

“It was so hot today I saw a robin dipping his worm in Nestea.
It was so hot today I saw a pigeon walking in the shadow of Orson Welles.
It was so hot today that Burger King was singing, "if you want it your way, cook it yourself."”

Johnny Carson (1925–2005) American talk show host and magician

The Tonight Show (Summer 1977).

Way, Cooking

“Dancing and singing are legitimate professions, not new to women. Banning such bars, would violate the right of these women to earn a livelihood, as laid down under Article 21 of the Constitution, as well as the right to carry on a legitimate profession under Article 19.”

Flavia Agnes (1947) Indian activist and lawyer

On Maharashtra government's ban on dancing girls in bars, as quoted in " Razing the Bar http://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/20050430/saturday/main1.htm" The Tribune (30 April 2005)

Women, Dance

“I guess that singing is probably a very selfish thing. I guess it doesn't matter what you do. It's selfish in a way 'cause there's satisfaction involved and so. As a singer, you sometimes have to justify your reason for existence in a sort of a way because: what really are you doing for people, they say?”

Anne Murray (1945) Canadian singer

On singing as a job, as quoted in a 1971 CBC interview: "Anne Murray thinks singing is selfish: The Vault", CBC/Radio-Canada, CBC.ca, 14 February 2018 http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1161696323776

People, Way, Selfishness

“The gods are growing old;
The stars are singing Golden hair to gray
Green leaf to yellow leaf,—or chlorophyl
To xanthophyl, to be more scientific.”

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935) American poet

Captain Craig (1902)

God, Star

“I’ve lived on my own since I was 13 and not been to school and brought a son up who’s now 18 and run theatre companies and bought a butcher’s shop, learnt guitar by myself, taught myself to sing and that sort of stuff.”

Stella Vine (1969) English artist

Billen, Andrew. "I Made More Money As A Stripper..." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article445303.ece?token=null&offset=12&page=2, (2004-06-15) On teaching herself to paint.

School

“Ah, spam. Where would we be without spam? I'll tell you where. We'll be living in a lush, verdant paradise, unspoilt by rejected technology, where men and women of all creeds and races can join hands and sing for the sheer joy of being alive.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

The Spam Man Cometh
Fully Ramblomatic, Features

Women, Men, Joy

“I'm not a drummer anymore, on my gravestone, if there is one, if anyone writes anything about me besides hopefully being a dad, it would be that I sang in my band when I was in my 20s. So I was like, "Yeah, I should probably focus on this a little more," so I just practiced a lot.”

Patrick Stump (1984) American musician

When asked about his singing.
AbsolutePunk.net, Patrick Stump, Part 1 - 10.06.08

“I can not sing the old songs now!
It is not that I deem them low;
’T is that I can’t remember how
They go.”

Charles Stuart Calverley (1831–1884) British poet

Changed; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“If we would We must self forgo if God we would attain, his grace must in us grow and ease us from all pain God discern,
The world we must despise,
His love and hate must learn,
See all things with His eyes.
And we must self forgo
If God we would attain,
His grace must in us grow
And ease us from all pain.
So shall we sing His praise
And be at one with Him,
In peace our voices raise
In the celestial hymn,
That with quadruple harmony
And all mellifluous melody,
In Heaven resounds eternally.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

Source: The Seven Steps of the Ladder of Spiritual Love, p. 124-5

Love, God, Pain, Hate

“With Moondance, I wrote the melody first. I played the melody on a soprano sax and I knew I had a song so I wrote lyrics to go with the melody. That's the way I wrote that one. I don't really have any words to particularly describe the song, sophisticated is probably the word I'm looking for. For me, Moondance is a sophisticated song. Frank Sinatra wouldn't be out of place singing that.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

As quoted in Celtic Crossroads: The Art of Van Morrison (1997) by Brian Hinton, p. 106

Way

“Since my childhood I have enjoyed reading Martial Arts fiction. I write it myself first and foremost for my own pleasure, and then for the pleasure of my readers (there is also, of course, the financial reward…). I am just a storyteller, like the professional storytellers of the Song dynasty. I believe Martial Arts fiction is like Peking Opera, or ballad-singing, or dancing, or music—its main function is to give pleasure.”

Jin Yong

As quoted in the "Translator's Introduction" to The Deer and the Cauldron: A Martial Arts Novel, Book 1, trans. John Minford (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. xi

Pleasure, Art, Music, Reading

“'We are strangers, lost and bemused," Roadstrum said to the lady. "We have landed here by accident. We are looking for a lady who was singing, the lady who (according to silly myth) is identical with the planet and who sang the planet into being."”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

Source: Space Chantey (1968), Ch. 6

“Perhaps these in stances [Mewar, Kangra, and Ajmer] made a contemporary poet of his court sing his praises as the great Muslim emperor who converted temples into mosques.”

Jahangir (1569–1627) 4th Mughal Emperor

Badshah-Nama Badshah Nama cited by Sri Ram Sharma, p. 63. Sharma, Sri Ram, Religious Policy of the Mughal Emperors, Bombay, 1962.

“I have always really liked Tom Jones and I can't wait to see him in action. One thing is for sure, I would rather be singing for a living than getting punched on the head.”

Ricky Hatton (1978) English former professional boxer

Ricky Hatton reveals he has two front row tickets for a Tom Jones concert http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/funny_old_game/6310365.stm

Waiting

“Music is a healing force and we have the privilege of sharing it. It's an awesome responsibility. It has to be something that says something from you. It's a beautiful way to live your life. Whether you end up doing it for a business or just end up singing for your kids, teaching other people to do music, or doing therapy, go forward with a lot of belief, because it's such an amazing way to live your life.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

commencement address to 2007 graduating class at Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA
www.u2france.com (May 13, 2007)
2007, 2008

Life, People, Beauty, Music

“Through the gloomy clouds break / Blue sky, sunshine, / On the heights and in the valley / Sing the lark and the nightingale
God, I thank you that I live / Not forever in this world / Strengthen me that my soul rise / Upward toward your firmament.”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

some poetry lines of Friedrich, c. 1802-05; as cited by C. D. Eberlein in C. D. Friedrich Bekenntnisse, p 57; as quoted & translated by Linda Siegel in Caspar David Friedrich and the Age of German Romanticism, Boston Branden Press Publishers, 1978, p. 48
1794 - 1840

God, World, Soul

“People may say I can't sing, but no one can ever say I didn't sing.”

Florence Foster Jenkins (1868–1944) American soprano, renowned for her lack of musical skill and singing ability

Attributed without citation in Vernon Alfred Howard, Charm and Speed: Virtuosity in the Performing Arts http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=qLXVeMzOvncC&pg=PA129&dq=%22People+may+say+I+can%27t+sing,+but+no+one+can+ever+say+I+didn%27t+sing.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=V4nPUqCCMs2ThgeusoGwAw&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22People%20may%20say%20I%20can%27t%20sing%2C%20but%20no%20one%20can%20ever%20say%20I%20didn%27t%20sing.%22&f=false (2008), p. 129.

People

“I sing the hymn of the conquered, who fell in the Battle of Life,—
The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed in the strife….
The hymn of the low and the humble, the weary, the broken in heart,
Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent and desperate part.”

William Wetmore Story (1819–1895) American sculptor, art critic, poet, translator and editor

Io Victis (1883). Compare: "Now it seems to me, when it can not be helped that defeat is great", Walt Whitman, To a Foiled European Revolutionaire.

Life, Heart, Parting

“She died with her telly on, 87 and confused,
With not enough hospital beds 'cos all the money’s been used,
On the end of the century party preparations,
And they reckon that the last thing she saw in her life,
Was Sting, singing on the roof of the Barbican.
A Country Practice, Four Lads Who Shook the Wirral”

Nigel Blackwell

1998
Lyrics

Life, Money, Country

“Flow gently, sweet Afton! amang thy green braes,
Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise.
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.”

Robert Burns Sweet Afton

Sweet Afton, st. 1 (1789)

Dreams

“On the highest steeps of Space he will have his dwelling-place,
In those far, terrific regions where the cold comes down like Death
Gleams the red glint of his pinions, smokes the vapor of his breath. Floating downward, very clear, still the echoes reach the ear
Of a little tune he whistles and a little song he sings,
Mounting, mounting still, triumphant, on his torn and broken wings!”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Young Adventure (1918), Winged Man

Death

“I am always surprised that the information profession, so quick to sing the virtues of literature search for its customers, pays so little attention to its own history. I have been told: “our problems are different from those of the past”. It is not so the problems are often the same, only the technical means available for solution may be new. The thinking and experience of the past can often shed light on the present.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

B.C. Vickery (2008), "Emanuel Goldberg and his knowledge machine by Michael Buckland". Book review, Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 40(2), p. 144.

History, Search, Literature, Problem

“Does the sweet morning rise,
Bride-like, from sleep,
When their first revelries
Bird and bee keep,
Singing out joyously
In the green tree?
Then, when my hopes are high,
Think I of thee.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(5th January 1833) Songs
The London Literary Gazette, 1833-1835

Hope, Bird, Thinking, Sleep

“After a ten minute prayer, the gist of which was, "Oh Lord, just sing through Mark tonight and keep him out of the picture altogether," I considered the prospect of lining up a great number of such concerts, then staying at home and sending a cardboard likeness of myself for God to sing through.”

Mark Heard (1951–1992) American musician and record producer

Life in the Industry: A Musician's Diary

God, Home

“It goes without saying that if there were anything happening in the room you never heard the clock at all, no more than if it did not exist; but when all was quiet and the visitors had gone and the table had been cleared and the door shut, then it would start up again, as steady as ever; and if you listened hard enough you could sometimes make out a singing note in its workings, or something very like an echo.</b”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

“It's offense you maybe can't live with because it opens up a crack inside your thinking, and if you look down into it you see there are evil things down there, and they have little yellow eyes that don't blink, and there's a stink down there in that dark and after a while you think maybe there's a whole other universe where a square moon rises in the sky, and the stars laugh in cold voices, and some of the triangles have four sides, and some have five, and some have five raised to the fifth power of sides. In this universe there might grow roses which sing. Everything leads to everything, he would have told them if he could. Go to your church and listen to your stories about Jesus walking on the water, but if I saw a guy doing that I'd scream and scream and scream. Because it wouldn't look like a miracle to me. It would look like an offense.”

Stephen King book It

It (1986)

Guy, Star, Thinking, Universe

“They knew me from the dawn of time: if Hermes beats his rainbow wings,
If Angus shakes his locks of light, or golden-haired Apollo sings,
It matters not the name, the land; my joy in all the gods abides:
Even in the cricket in the grass some dimness of me smiles and hides.
For joy of me the day star glows, and in delight and wild desire
The peacock twilight rays aloft its plumes and blooms of shadowy fire,
Where in the vastness too I burn through summer nights and ages long,
And with the fiery footed Watchers shake in myriad dance and song.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

God, Age, Smile, Star

“…a fakir singing a ghazal of Ghalib’s. They sat down and listened and when it was over Saigal put his hand in his pocket and whatever was in it – 5,000 rupees, a great sum in those days – gave to the fakir. And when the friend asked whether he knew how much he had given, Saigal said, “Did Oopar Wala count the money when he gave it to me?”

K. L. Saigal (1904–1947) Indian actor

Saigal meant 'god' as Ooparwal in "Begum Akhtar the Undisputed Malika of Ghazals".

Money

“A celebrity has just as much right to speak out as people who hold real jobs. This is America, after all, and you should not be precluded from voicing your opinions just because you sing songs, mouth other peoples' words on a sitcom or, for that matter, spin a giant multi-colored wheel on a game show.”

Pat Sajak (1946) American television host

2005 column about celebrities and politics, cited in: " Sajak says... http://ex-donkey.new.mu.nu/?page=111," at ;;ex-donkey.new. posted by: Gary at 04:33 PM. 2000s

People, Color, Game

“p>Come live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Or woods or steepy mountain yields.And we will sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies.”

Christopher Marlowe The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love (unknown date), stanzas 1 and 2. Compare: "To shallow rivers, to whose falls / Melodious birds sings madrigals; / There will we make our peds of roses, / And a thousand fragrant posies", William Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor, act iii. scene i. (Sung by Evans.)

Love, Pleasure, Mountain, Bird

“You sing the song in your heart and the people it resonates with are going to dance to it.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 53

People, Heart, Dance

“I want to say to those who are trying to learn to speak and those who are teaching them: Be of good cheer. Do not think of to-day's failures, but of the success that may come to-morrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere, and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles — a delight in climbing rugged paths, which you would perhaps never know if you did not sometime slip backward — if the road was always smooth and pleasant. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost. Sometime, somewhere, somehow we shall find that which we seek. We shall speak, yes, and sing, too, as God intended we should speak and sing.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Address to the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf (8 July 1896)

God, Beauty, Failure, Thinking

“Deceive not thyself by overexpecting happiness in the married estate. Remember the nightingales which sing only some months in the spring, but commonly are silent when they have hatched their eggs.”

Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) English churchman and historian

Of Marriage.
The Holy State and the Profane State (1642)

Happiness, Spring

“Love, I find is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Dust Tracks on a Road

Source: Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), Ch. 14 : Love, p. 203.

Love

“All things are connected with all things throughout the universe, from the insect to the archangel; from the sand-grain to the mountain and the globe; from the dew-drop to the ocean; from the rain-drop to the rainbow; from the pebble on the shore to 'the sun that blazes in the firmament; from the zephyr that sings among the flowers of the field to the ocean that pours its wild bass in the great anthem of nature. Not only are all things connected with all things, but there is a concatenation of events, so that the character and effects of no one event can terminate in itself. As each event owes some portion of its nature to that which preceded it, so it imparts some of its nature to that which succeeds it, and thus perpetuates the blended good or evil of itself and its predecessors. The single event may thus live on in its influence along the line of all the ages, assuming new shapes, or if clothing itself in the drapery of new events, ever marching onward and upward in the continually growing affairs of time.”

John Lanahan (1815–1903)

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 611.

Age, Mountain, Flowers, Nature

“Life is a jest;
Take the delight of it.
Laughter is best;
Sing through the night of it.
Swiftly the tear
And the hurt and the ache of it
Find us down here;
Life must be what we make of it.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Life, stanza 1, All That Matters, p. 80 (1922).

Life, Tear, Laughter, Hurt

“Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom´
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.”

T.S. Eliot book The Hollow Men

The Hollow Men (1925)

Death, Dreams, Star, Tree

“Let us rejoice and let us sing and dance and ring in the new: Hail Atlantis!”

Donovan (1946) Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist

Spoken prelude
Atlantis (1968)

Dance

“When the early morning sun
first pierced the grayness in the sky,
a pickerel rose from his watery home
to climb a pine tree, singing.
And high in the branches, he looked upon
the morning's glowing beauty -
the wind-blown ripples on the lake,
dew-freshened flowers and fields below.”

Aaro Hellaakoski (1893–1952) Finnish writer, poet, geographer and teacher

Aaro Hellaakoski. "The song of the pike hauen laulu." Aina Swan Cutler (trans.) in: Aili Jarvenpa, ‎Michael G. Karni (1989), Sampo, the magic mill: a collection of Finnish-American writing.

Beauty, Home, Flowers, Tree

“No, not really. I’m a singer. Listen, I never meant to make money. I never wanted it. I’m a singer, man. When I put out a record called "Be-Bop-A-Lula", my only thought was to just make a living singing. But all of a sudden, I was getting $1500 a night. And you take a 19-year old boy and put him in those circumstances … I had a Cadillac and all. It was a bad scene. It shouldn’t have happened on that first record.”

Gene Vincent (1935–1971) American musician

Money, Boy, Night

“Mine was a threeplank bed whereon
I lay and cursed the weary sun.
They took away the prison clothes
and on the frosty nights I froze.
I had a Bible where I read
that Jesus came to raise the dead—
I kept myself from going mad
by singing an old bawdy ballad
and birds sang on my windowsill
and tortured me till I was ill”

Basil Bunting (1900–1985) Poet

from "Villon" (1930)

Bird, Reading, Sun, Madness

“I learned I'm not the kind of artist that can just sing someone else's songs, for a lot of reasons. I have to have some sort of understanding of the song, or some sort of attachment to it.”

Colleen Fitzpatrick (1972) American singer and actress

When asked what she learned from writing to her album
Attributed

Understanding, Learning

“Once I got into it, I (realized) in this medium, you can use musical theater to connect and make a dream come true, like fly on stage. Through stagecraft you can wow (the audience) and make them feel that sense of wonder. … You’re singing, you’re dancing, and you’re performing a feat of wonder. I couldn’t stop thinking in those terms. There was so much potential.”

Misty Lee (1976) Magician, voice actress, comedian

Mt. Clemens native Misty Lee hangs with Houdini, Princess Leia, Spidey https://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/2016/10/22/misty-lee-magician-voice-actress/92484578/ (October 22, 2016)

Dreams, Music, Feeling, Thinking

“It's actually quite difficult to stay awake while watch golf on television. It's a great sleep inducer. I think this is why the commentators in golf whisper. They don't want to wake you up. 'Looks like Tiger has about a twenty foot putt, and while he's lining it up I'll take this opportunity to sing "Rock-a-Bye baby,…"”

Jeff Stilson American comedian

Comedy Central Presents Jeff Stilson (2003)

Thinking, Sleep, Baby