“We say: he has no talent, only tone. But tone is precisely what cannot be invented — we're born with it. Tone is an inherited grace, the privilege some of us have of making our organic pulsations felt — tone is more than talent, it is its essence.”
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
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Emil M. Cioran 531
Romanian philosopher and essayist 1911–1995Related quotes

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, How expression may be given to a picture, p. 34

“Tone of voice is more crucial than words.”
Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 25.

“My works are 12-tone compositions, not 12-tone compositions”
Stuckenschmidt, Hans Heinz. 1977, in Schoenberg: His Life, World and Work; translated from the German by Humphrey Searle. p. 349.
after 1930

“I cannot speak
In happy tones”
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 514.
Context: I cannot speak
In happy tones; the tear drops on my cheek
Show I am sad;
But I can speak
Of grace to suffer with submission meek,
Until made glad.
I cannot feel
That all is well, when dark'ning clouds conceal
The shining sun;
But then I know
God lives and loves; and say, since it is so,
"Thy will be done."

Quoted by Maria Buszek, online - note 19 http://mariabuszek.com/mariabuszek/kcai/Expressionism/Readings/SignacDelaNeo.pdf
The notebook where this sentence appears was only published, in facsimile, in 1913 by J. Guiffrey. Signac therefore must have consulted it at the Conde Museum, in Chantilly. This Moroccan travel document was bought at the Delacroix sale by the painter Dauzats for the Duc of Aumale.
From Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, 1899

“Tears, that could be the tone, if they weren't so easy, the true tone and tenor at last.”
Texts for Nothing (1955)
'Marcel Proust', p. 579
Essays and reviews, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time (2007)