Quotes about tenor

A collection of quotes on the topic of tenor, love, making, way.

Quotes about tenor

Jeremy Bentham photo
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Leontyne Price photo

“Up, up, up is where sopranos are. And tenors. Without that, it's not very exciting.”

Leontyne Price (1927) American soprano

From "NEA Opera Honors: Interview with Leontyne Price" for the National Endowment for the Arts on June 4, 2010.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqVu_wlxTzM&t=1565s

Dorothy Parker photo

“Prince or commoner, tenor or bass,
Painter or plumber or never-do-well,
Do me a favor and shut your face -
Poets alone should kiss and tell.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: The Collected Dorothy Parker

Josefa Iloilo photo
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“A counter tenor is anyone who can count to ten.”

Denis Norden (1922–2018) British comedy scriptwriter and television presenter

Quoted in My Music by Steve Race

Joseph Martin Kraus photo

“Yesterday there was a Concert Spirituel. The symphony by Haydn was lovely and the execution very good. Mademoiselle Wendling and a Welsh tenor Giuliano were hissed. Danner and another Welsh violinist Giuliani were overall applauded. A sinfonia concertante by the brothers Thonberg [Romberg] got applause. The concert on the bassoon by Devienne so so.”

Joseph Martin Kraus (1756–1792) German composer

Gestern war Concert Spirituel. Die Symphonie von Haydn war allerliebst und die Exekution vorzüglich gut. Mlle Wendling und ein welscher Tenorist Giuliano wurden ausgepfiffen. Danner und ein andrer welscher Geiger Giuliani wurden allgemein beklatscht. Eine Symphonie concertante von den Gebrüdern und Söhnen Thonberg [Romberg] fand Beifall. Das Konzert auf dem Fagotte von Devienne so so.
Letter dated Paris, 3rd February 1785. To pater Roman Hofstetter in Amorbach, in: Irmgard Leux-Henschen, Joseph Martin Kraus in seinen Briefen, Stockholm 1978.
Letters

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“I’ll follow the reedy tenor of his excuses and blast them with the bellowy bass of irrefutable logic!”

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 4 (p. 33)

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Waldemar Łysiak photo
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“In sober state,
Through the sequestered vale of rural life,
The venerable patriarch guileless held
The tenor of his way.”

Beilby Porteus (1731–1809) Bishop of Chester; Bishop of London

Source: Death: A Poetical Essay (1759), Line 108. Compare: "They kept the noiseless tenor of their way" (alternately quoted as "the even tenor of their way"), Thomas Gray, Elegy in a Country Churchyard, Stanza 19, line 4.

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Mel Brooks photo

“Lead Tenor Stormtrooper: Springtime, for Hitler, and Germany
Winter, for Poland and France!”

Mel Brooks (1926) American director, writer, actor, and producer

The Producers

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Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo

“The extreme moment of shock in battle presents in heightened and distorted form some of the distinctive characteristics of a whole society involved in war. These characteristics in turn represent a heightening and distortion of many of the traits of a social world cracked open by transformative politics. The threats to survival are immediate and shifting; no mode of association or activity can be held fixed if it stands as an obstacle to success. The existence of stable boundaries between passionate and calculating relationships disappears in the terror of the struggle. All settled ties and preconceptions shake or collapse under the weight of fear, violence, and surprise. What the experience of combat sharply diminishes is the sense of variety in the opportunities of self-expression and attachment, the value given to the bonds of community and to life itself, the chance for reflective withdrawal and for love. In all these ways, it is a deformed expression of the circumstance of society shaken up and restored to indefinition. Yet the features of this circumstance that the battle situation does share often suffice to make the boldest associative experiments seem acceptable in battle even if they depart sharply from the tenor of life in the surrounding society. Vanguardist warfare is the extreme case. It is the response of unprejudiced intelligence and organized collaboration to violence and contingency.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Plasticity Into Power: Comparative-Historical Studies on the Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success (1987), p. 160

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“A young tenor player was complaining to me that Coleman Hawkins made him nervous. Man, I told him Hawkins was supposed to make him nervous! Hawkins has been making other sax players nervous for forty years!”

Cannonball Adderley (1928–1975) American jazz alto saxophonist

New to Jazz Artist page http://www.newtojazz.com/artist.asp?id=10&section=guides

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“[A register is constituted by] the linguistic features which are typically associated with a configuration of situational features - with particular values of the field, mode and tenor.”

Michael Halliday (1925–2018) Australian linguist

Source: 1970s and later, Cohesion in English (English Language), 1976, p. 22 cited in: Helen Leckie-Tarry (1998) Language and Context. p. 6.

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Abraham Cowley photo

“They first sallied forth in a body of about 500 persons to attack the market place of the village known as Poorwa, where they slaughtered a cow. With the blood of the animal they defiled a Hindu temple. Then they hung up the four quarters (of the cow) in the different parts of the market place. They maltreated and wounded an unfortunate Brahmin and threatened to make him a Muslim… The village of Laoghatty in the Nadia district was their next object attack. Here they commenced operations by the repetition of the same outrage to the religious feelings of the Hindus which they had committed at Poorwa, viz, the slaughter of a cow in that part of the village exclusively occupied by Hindu residents. But being opposed by Hardeb Ray, a principal inhabitant of the village, and a Brahmin, at the head of a party of villagers, an affray ensued in which one Debnath Ray was killed and Hardeb Ray and a number of villagers were severely wounded… Titu’s party went on increasing and with growing confidence they went on killing cows in different places, making raids on the neighbouring villages, forcing from the raiyats agreements to furnish grain, compelling many of them to profess conformity to the tenets of their sect… They openly proclaimed themselves masters of the country, asserting that the Mussalmans from whom the English usurped it, were the rightful owners of the empire… The rebels issued parwanas to the principal zamindars of the district. Their tenor was as follows: “This country is now given to our Deen Mohammed. You must, therefore, immediately send grain to the army.’ In a written report the magistrate of Nadia states that a paper written in Bengali and signed in Arabic characters, was put into his hand, purporting to be an order of Allah to the Pal Chowdhuries of Ranaghat to supply russud (rations) to the army of fakirs who were about to fight with the government.”

About the exploits of Titumir. Narahari Kaviraj, Wahabi And Faraizi Rebels of Bengal, New Delhi, 1982, Pp. 37-38, 43-44, 50-51. Quoted in Goel, Sita Ram (1995). Muslim separatism: Causes and consequences. ISBN 9788185990262

Samuel Adams photo

“It is not unfrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty, — to oppress without control or the restraint of laws all who are poorer or weaker than themselves.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Essay published in The Advertiser (1748) http://thingsabove.freerovin.com/samadams.htm and later reprinted in The Life and Public Service of Samuel Adams, Volume 1 (1865), by William Vincent Wells <!-- Little, Brown, and Company; Boston -->
Context: Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man. We must not conclude merely upon a man's haranguing upon liberty, and using the charming sound, that he is fit to be trusted with the liberties of his country. It is not unfrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty, — to oppress without control or the restraint of laws all who are poorer or weaker than themselves. It is not, I say, unfrequent to see such instances, though at the same time I esteem it a justice due to my country to say that it is not without shining examples of the contrary kind; — examples of men of a distinguished attachment to this same liberty I have been describing; whom no hopes could draw, no terrors could drive, from steadily pursuing, in their sphere, the true interests of their country; whose fidelity has been tried in the nicest and tenderest manner, and has been ever firm and unshaken.
The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people.

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“No, there's going to be no even tenor with me.”

Richard Halliburton (1900–1939) American writer

Letter to his parents from Paris (5 December 1919).
Context: Dad, you hit the wrong target when you write that you wish I were at Princeton living "in the even tenor of my way." I hate that expression and as far as I am able I intend to avoid that condition. When impulse and spontaneity fail to make my "way" as uneven as possible then I shall sit up nights inventing means of making life as conglomerate and vivid as possible. Those who live in the even tenor of their way simply exist until death ends their monotonous tranquility. No, there's going to be no even tenor with me. The more uneven it is the happier I shall be. And when my time comes to die, I'll be able to die happy, for I will have done and seen and heard and experienced all the joy, pain, thrills—every emotion that any human ever had—and I'll be especially happy if I am spared a stupid, common death in bed. So, Dad, I'm afraid your wish will always come to naught, for my way is to be ever changing, but always swift, acute and leaping from peak to peak instead of following the rest of the herd, shackled in conventionalities, along the monotonous narrow path in the valley. The dead have reached perfection when it comes to even tenor!

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“Limitations of this kind can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of the Courts of justice; whose duty it must be to declare all Acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing.”

No. 78
The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)
Context: The complete independence of the Courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited Constitution. By a limited Constitution, I understand one which contains certain specified exceptions to the Legislative authority; such, for instance, as that it shall pass no bills of attainder, no ex post facto laws, and the like. Limitations of this kind can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of the Courts of justice; whose duty it must be to declare all Acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing.

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