Quotes about voice
page 17

“The only places in the gospels where the paternal voice of God appears independently of Jesus is precisely to indicate that it is to Jesus that we must listen, and that in him God is glorified.”

James Alison (1959) Christian theologian, priest

Source: Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001), "Jesus' fraternal relocation of God", p. 81.

God, Appearance

“When I first moved to LA, no one could understand a thing I said, you would think I was speaking another language. Every time I would order something at Starbucks, they would go, 'Huh? What did you say?' My accent was an issue and my low voice was as well. They thought I should be more girlie. But that's who I am.”

Miley Cyrus (1992) American actor and singer-songwriter

Inquirer.net http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/entertainment/entertainment/view/20081120-173424/Miley-Cyrus-lends-voice-to-animated-film (November 20, 2008)

Understanding, Thinking, Time

“Fame, whose sweet voice whispers of phantom bliss
to you proud mortals, and who seems so fair,
is a mere echo, dream, dream lost in shade,
at every wind-puff scattered and unmade.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

La fama che invaghisce a un dolce suono
Voi superbi mortali, e par si bella,
E un'ecco, un sogno, anzi del sogno un'ombra,
Ch'ad ogni vento si dilegua e sgombra.
Canto XIV, stanza 63 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Dreams

“Beneath the noise, below the din,
I hear a voice, it's whispering,
"In science and in medicine,
"I was a stranger, you took me in."”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

"Miracle Drug"
Lyrics, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004)

Science

“In a lot of classical playing there isn't much expressiveness: I don't hear a voice in the playing. What I really admire about jazz musicians is that they develop a sound early on and it's unique to them. Classical players are screened from that by always playing other people's notes.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

The Times, 21/04/2006
On Classical Music

People

“I'm the worst auditioner, really, really bad. I mean, you're being judged and I'm just so aware of it that it consumes me. I can't relax, I'm tied in knots, so the voice is very taut and tense. You're so aware that you're acting 'cause you're sitting across from this lady with a piece of paper who's going, I'm. Going. To. Shoot. You. If. You. Don't. Blah, blah, blah, in this emotionless voice. It's foul. I hate it.”

Heath Ledger (1979–2008) Australian actor

As quoted by EW.com (May 2001).

Hate

“Porphyry is right to suggest that Plotinus' teaching "voice" has about it something particular (idios), speaking as if inspired and from his own experience rather than out of the tradition. The rhetorical character of the "voice" is precisely that of an autobiographical urgency in the attainment of the One: "Attempt to lead the god in you back to the godhead in the all."”

Mark D. Jordan (1953)

Authority and persuasion in philosophy (1985)

God

“The slim and agile baritone, Vytas Juozapaitis, portrayed the Don as a self centered nobleman. He sang with a pleasant voice, and unlike most interpreters of the role, he had no trouble tossing off the 'Champagne Aria' at top speed.”

Vytautas Juozapaitis (1963) Lithuanian opera singer

Opera Japonica (October, 2003)

Speed

“I explained to the crowd that my voice was hoarse from a cold and that my physician had advised me not to attend. "I hope that you will not disclose to him that I have violated his instructions," I told them. I congratulated Mr. de Klerk for his strong showing. I thanked all those in the ANC and the democratic movement who had worked so hard for so long. Mrs. Coretta Scott King, the wife of the great freedom fighter Martin Luther King Jr., was on the podium that night, and I looked over to her as I made reference to her husband's immortal words.
"This is one of the most important moments in the life of our country. I stand here before you filled with deep pride and joy--pride in the ordinary, humble people of this country. You have shown such a calm, patient determination to reclaim this country as your own, and now the joy that we can loudly proclaim from the rooftops — Free at last! Free at last! I stand before you humbled by your courage, with a heart full of love for all of you."”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1990s, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)

Love, Life, People, Hope

“Well there's Basie, Miller, Satchmo
And the king of all, Sir Duke,
And with a voice like Ella's ringing out,
There's no way the band can lose.”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

Sir Duke
Song lyrics, Songs In The Key of Life (1976)

Way

“Let the singing singers
With vocal voices, most vociferous,
In sweet vociferation out-vociferize
Even sound itself.”

Henry Carey Chrononhotonthologos

Act i. Sc. 1.
Chrononhotonthologos (1734)

Singing

“I'm gonna take a wild guess—I think that was Buddy DeFranco, and possibly the Glenn Miller Orchestra. The band strikes me as an enigma, in that, first of all, some interesting harmonic things are happening as far as the individual voicings are concerned, but yet it's played in an older, tighter fashion. For instance, the bass player, if there are chord changes happening every two beats, plays the root for two beats, then the next root for two beats—that type of sound. The harmony, especially in the opening part where the theme is established, is a lot more modern than that kind of band would normally sound. I think that they're playing that way to keep that Miller identity, with that rhythmic tightness”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Reviewing DeFranco's arrangement of Billy Strayhorn's "Chelsea Bridge", from the album Glenn Miller Orchestra Under the Direction of Buddy DeFranco; as quoted in "Clare Fischer: Blindfold Test" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#2nmgk677qzm4cnu by Leonard Feather, in Downbeat (October 19, 1967), p. 38

Way, Fashion, Thinking, Change

“I don't ever wanna wake up, looking into someone else's eyes.
Another voice calling me baby on the other end of the phone.
A new girl putting on her makeup before dinner on Friday night.
No, I don't ever wanna know. Oh, oh.
No other shotgun rider, beside me, singin' to the radio.
Oh, oh. Oh, oh.”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

Shotgun Rider
Song lyrics, Sundown Heaven Town (2014)

Girl, Baby, Night

“Whether one agrees or not with Mr. Taylor (or the other climatologists whose voices are being stifled), this is an inappropriate politicalization of climate science to promote a particular view.”

Roger A. Pielke (1946) American meteorologist

"More on the Suppression of Climate Change Views," Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr. Research Group Weblog (2007-06-23) http://climatesci.org/2007/06/23/more-on-the-suppresion-of-climate-change-views/

Science

“I was filled with joy when studying quantum physics at the university as a means to understand the universe. But at the same time, I was preoccupied with the oppressive conditions in my country and the tyranny suffered by our universities, intellectuals, and the media. Like many others in our universities, I felt compelled to join the struggle for freedom. What we experience is a decades-old tyranny, that cannot tolerate freedom of speech and thought. In the name of religion, it restricts and punishes science, intellect, and even love. It labels as a threat to national security and toxic to society whatever is not compatible with its political and economic interests. It considers punishing unwelcome ideas as a positive thing. It does not tolerate differences of opinion; it responds to logic not by logic, discussion or dialog, but by suppression. By tyranny I mean a ruling power that tries to make only one voice—the voice of a ruling minority in Iran—dominant, with no regard for pluralism in the society. By tyranny I mean a judiciary that disregards even the Islamic Republic’s own constitution, and sentences intellectuals, writers, journalists, and political and civil activists to long prison terms, without due process and trial in a court of law. … By tyranny I mean power-holders who believe they stand above the law and who disregard justice and the urgent demands of the human conscience.”

Narges Mohammadi (1972) Iranian human rights activist

Letter Accepting 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prizefrom (2018)

Love, Religion, Justice, Law

“For no reason at all, I thought of New Year's Eve, when all those people crowd into Times Square and scream like jackals as the lighted ball slides down the pole, ready to shed its thin party glare on three hundred and sixty-five new days in this best of all possible worlds. I have always wondered what it would be like to be caught in one of those crowds, screaming and not able to hear your own voice, your individuality momentarily wiped out and replaced with the blind empathic overslop of the crowd's lurching, angry anticipation, hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder with no one in particular.”

Stephen King book Rage

Rage (1977)

People, World, Light, Time

“Her style looks absurdly simple — an effortless act of projection, a serpentine lasso whereby her voice casually winds itself around our most vulnerable fantasies. But it is not easy. It is what remains when ingratiation, sentimentality and the manifold devices of heart-warming crap have been ruthlessly pared away. Steel and silk are left, shining and durable.”

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) English theatre critic and writer

"Marlene Dietrich" (1967), p. 215
Profiles (1990)

Heart

“God speaks, but always in the voice of the voiceless, the defenceless, the powerless. If the powerful do not hear God in this way, they will not hear God at all.”

Allan Boesak (1946) South African anti-apartheid activist

Source: Comfort and Protest (1987), p. 71

God, Way

“You want me to go into a sewer, Mister Sharpe?' Sarah asked in a small voice.
'No, miss, I don't', Sharpe said. 'I want you to be in green fields and happy, with enough money to last you the rest of your life. But to get you there I have to go through a sewer.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Escape (2003)

Life, Money, Happiness

“I should be inexcusable, considering the share I have formerly had in that unhappy business, if, upon this occasion, I should omit to mention the African slave-trade. I do not rank this amongst our national sins, because I hope, and believe, a very great majority of the nation earnestly long for its suppression. But, hitherto, petty and partial interest prevail against the voice of justice, humanity and truth. This enormity, however, is not sufficiently laid to heart. If you are justly shocked by what you hear of the cruelties practised in France, you would, perhaps, be shocked much more, if you could fully conceive of the evils and miseries inseparable from this traffic, which I apprehend, not from hearsay, but from my own observation, are equal in atrocity, and, perhaps superior in number, in the course of a single year, to any or all the worst actions which have been known in France since the commencement of their revolution. There is a cry of blood against us; a cry accumulated by the accession of fresh victims, of thousands, of scores of thousands, I had almost said of hundreds of thousands, from year to year.”

John Newton (1725–1807) Anglican clergyman and hymn-writer

As quoted in The Works of the Rev. John Newton... to which are Prefixed Memoirs of His Life (1839), Vol. 2, U. Hunt, pages 429-230.

Truth, Justice, Hope, Business

“The office of Speaker is almost as ancient as Parliament itself. It emerged in the Middle Ages when the Commons - the ordinary people - of England needed a spokesman in their dealings with the King, someone who would voice their grievances and present their petitions. This was by no means a safe or easy thing to do at that time, and potential spokesman generally had to be pressured into accepting the responsibility.”

John Allen Fraser (1931) Canadian politician

Source: The House Of Commons At Work (1993), Chapter 4, The Office of Speaker of the House of Commons, p. 46

People, Age, Time

“The human heart is a wide moor under a dull sky, with voices of invisible birds calling in the distance.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), The Human Heart

Bird, Heart

“All day the heat had been barely supportable but at evening a breeze arose in the West, blowing from the heart of the setting sun and from the ocean, which lay unseen, unheard behind the scrubby foothills. It shook the rusty fringes of palm-leaf and swelled the dry sounds of summer, the frog-voices, the grating cicadas, and the ever present pulse of music from the neighbouring native huts.”

Evelyn Waugh book The Loved One

First lines
The Loved One (1948)

Music, Support, Sun, Heart

“"You know, I'm a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard - in other words a netbook - will be the mainstream on that." quoted in”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

February 2010
http://blogs.bnet.com/corporate-strategy/?p=101
2000s

Thinking, Reading

“When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

10 December 1824
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)

Heart

“She really was a person who cared very much about others. She worked for justice and inclusion and making sure that women's voices were heard. She wasn't willing to just accept the world as we were told it was, but worked to help make it more beautiful. I am very grateful for her bringing that into my life.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Molly Vetter, friend of Wadewitz — quoted in: Wetzel, Diane. (April 23, 2014). "NP grad, Wikipedia editor dies in Calif." http://www.nptelegraph.com/news/np-grad-wikipedia-editor-dies-in-calif/article_c7be4462-ab39-53ad-b3e8-9055b51d3bdf.html NPTelegraph.com. North Platte, Nebraska. — and: Wetzel, Diane (April 23, 2014). "North Platte grad, 37, Wikipedia editor, dies in climbing fall" http://www.omaha.com/article/20140423/NEWS/140429478/1707. Omaha World-Herald (Omaha, Nebraska). About

Life, Women, World, Justice

“Towards the end of the night, as trucks rumbled
In the streets, you stirred, cuddled to me,
And spoke my name. Your voice was the voice
Of a girl who had never known loss
Of love, betrayal, mistrust, or lie.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

In Defense of the Earth (1956), She Is Away

Love, Lie, Girl, Betrayal

“The danger of living two lives is that they can unintentionally collide. Like when my Erika Jayne voice comes into Erika Girardi’s life.”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

TedxPasadena speech (2018)

Life

“I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Gita. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1 October 1848
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)

Books, Age, Exercises, Intelligence

“[Bart's voice] Yo, what’s happenin' man, this is Bart Simpson [laughs], [normal voice] […] [Bart's voice] Just kidding, don’t hang up, this is Nancy Cartwright.”

Nancy Cartwright (1957) American actress

Quoted in Bart Simpson's voice being used to promote Scientology event, Olshansky, Elliot, New York Daily News, 2009-01-28, 2009-01-28 http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2009/01/28/2009-01-28_bart_simpsons_voice_being_used_to_promot.html, Cartwright promoting a Scientology event via a robocall.

“I find it breathtaking […] that when musical composition competitions are held, the contestants often do not submit tapes or records (or live performances) of their works they submit written scored, and the judges confidently make their aesthetic judgements on the basis of just reading the scores and hearing the music in their minds. How good are the best musical imaginations? Can a trained musician, swiftly reading a score tell just how that voicing of dissonant oboes and flutes over the massed strings will sound?”

Daniel Dennett book Consciousness Explained

Consciousness Explained (1991)

Music, Confidence, Imagination, Reading

“Aillas groaned. “Destiny could never be so unkind.”
Suldrun said in a soft voice: “Destiny doesn’t really care.””

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Suldrun's Garden (1983), Chapter 11, section 1 (p. 103)

“Whatever it was that darkened the love between the uncle and his niece, their quarrels became more violent and at the end of the summer of 1931 Geli announced that she was returning to Vienna to resume her voice studies. Hitler forbade her to go. The next morning Geli Raubal was found shot dead in her room. The coroner reported that a bullet had gone through her chest below the left shoulder and penetrated the heart; it seemed beyond doubt that the shot was self-inflicted. Yet for years afterward in Munich there was murky gossip that Geli Raubal had been murdered -- by Hitler in a rage, by Himmler to eliminate a situation that had become embarrassing to the party. But no credible evidence ever turned up to substantiate such rumors.”

William L. Shirer book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Source: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960), pp. 131,132

Love, Study, Rage, Heart

“Tuol Sleng was a Vietnamese exhibition; a journalist wrote that. People talk about Tuol Sleng, Tuol Sleng, Toul Sleng, but when we look at the pictures, the pictures are the same. When I first heard about Tuol Sleng, it was on VOA [Voice of America]. I listened twice.”

Pol Pot (1925–1998) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea

Nate Thayer interview (1997)

People

“I believe until a man has given up himself he has given up nothing - all his knowledge of accepted aesthetics are of no avail until he has stepped aside from them and given up himself – himself only through the eyes of himself. What a problem everlasting then is it not? A life time of breathless endeavor to be the thing and do the thing of his being – So easy to travel along with claques and crowds, voicing vociferously the great discoveries of each – How ineffably difficult, voicing the soul of one man – alone to himself and – then to whomever else hears..”

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist

letter to w:Alfred Sieglitz, June 1911, Hartley Archive, Yale University; as quoted in Marsden Hartley, by Gail R. Scott, Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988, New York p. 147
1908 - 1920

Life, Travel, Soul, Knowledge

“Love your self's self where it lives.
There is no special God to refer to; or if there is,
why did I let you grow
in another place. You did not know my voice
when I came back to call. All the superlatives
of tomorrow's white tree and mistletoe
will not help you know the holidays you had to miss.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

"The Double Image"
To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960)

Love, God, Tree, Holiday

“May we feel after Thee; still calling out in the darkness, as children waking in the night call "Father," so may we call out for God; and, at times, even if we do not hear Thy voice, may there be the form of a hand resting upon us, and that shall be enough; for we shall take hold of it, though it be in the dark, and it shall guide us to the growing light; for the day shall come, and the release and triumph.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 595

God, Children, Feeling, Light

“This is a good day for the world's children. Children who today have no right to their own childhood, to education, to personal inviolability, have with these two representatives, these prize winners, got a voice both for the right to education — particularly for girls — and against unfair and exploitative child labor.”

Angela Merkel (1954) Chancellor of Germany

Reaction to the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize announcement https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/reaction-to-the-2014-nobel-peace-prize-announcement-1.2048390 CTV News, (10th October 2014) 2014

Children, World, Education, Girl

“It was painful for me several years ago when several friends were arrested. I said nothing. I didn’t want to lose my job or my freedom. I worried about my family.
I have made a different choice now. I have left my home, my family and my job, and I am raising my voice. To do otherwise would betray those who languish in prison. I can speak when so many cannot. I want you to know that Saudi Arabia has not always been as it is now. We Saudis deserve better.”

Jamal Khashoggi (1958–2018) Saudi Arabian journalist

"Saudi Arabia wasn’t always this repressive. Now it’s unbearable." in The Washington Post (18 September 2017)

Pain, Family, Home, Freedom

“Horrified, The Goober counted the punches Janza was throwing at his helpless opponent. Fifteen, sixteen. He leaped to his feet. Stop it, stop it. But nobody heard. His voice was lost in he thunder or screaming voices, voices calling for the kill… kill him, kill him.”

Robert Cormier book The Chocolate War

Source: The Chocolate War (1974), p. 254

“Come, then, with what voice Thou wilt come, Thou power- clad Messenger of my Redeemer! Come with thunder on Thy tongue, or with a sweet "harp of ten strings;" come to us simple as a little child, or wise as a scribe instructed of God; but, O! let us only feel that fire in Thy message which lies not in sentences nor in tones, but in a heart itself inflamed from above, and pouring fire into our hearts.”

William Arthur (minister) (1819–1901) Wesleyan Methodist minister and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 323.

God, Feeling, Heart

“I was growing inward incessantly; like an animal that hibernates during the wintertime, I could hear other peoples' voices with my ears; my own voice, however, I could hear only in my throat. The loneliness and the solitude that lurked behind me were like a condensed, thick, eternal night, like one of those nights with a dense, persistent, sticky darkness which waits to pounce on unpopulated cities filled with lustful and vengeful dreams.”

Sadegh Hedayat book The Blind Owl

The Blind Owl

People, Dreams, Solitude, Waiting

“Are we ready to believe in the power of our own voices? Are we ready to cast aside our fear and cynicism? Are we ready to work our hearts out to make our dream a reality? Are we ready to overcome? If we are truly ready, then now is the time. This one’s on us. We cannot afford to wait. We cannot afford to doubt. We cannot afford to make excuses. We have this moment of opportunity. And we need to seize it.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2000s, A Challenge to Overcome (November 2007)

Fear, Dreams, Reality, Time

“I suppose it is written that any one who sets up for a bit of a philosopher, must contradict himself to his very face. For here have I fairly talked myself into thinking that we have the whole thing before us at last; that there is no answer to the mystery, except that there are as many as you please; that there is no centre to the maze because, like the famous sphere, its centre is everywhere; and that agreeing to differ with every ceremony of politeness, is the only “one undisturbed song of pure concent” to which we are ever likely to lend our musical voices.”

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer

Crabbed Age and Youth.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)

Music, Thinking

“Though I were gifted with an angel's tongue,
And voice like that with which the prophets sung,
Yet if mild charity were not within,
'T were all an impious mockery and sin.”

Lucretia Maria Davidson (1808–1825) American poet

Charity

Angels

“It is so sweet to hear His voice in silence, so sweet indeed.”

Elia M. Ramollah (1973) founder and leader of the El Yasin Community

Flow of Divine Guidance (vol.1)

Silence

“While I thus cogitate in disquiet and perplexity, half submerged in dark waters of a well in an Arabian oasis, I suddenly hear a voice from the background of my memory, the voice of an old Kurdish nomad: If water stands motionless in a pool it grows stale and muddy, but when it moves and flows it becomes clear: so, too, man in his wanderings. Whereupon, as if by magic, all disquiet leaves me. I begin to look upon myself with distant eyes, as you might look at the pages of a book to read a story from them; and I begin to understand that my life could not have taken a different course. For when I ask myself, 'What is the sum total of my life?' somthing in me seems to answer, 'You have set out to exchange one world for another-to gain a new world for yourself in exchange for an old one which you never really possessed.”

Muhammad Asad book The Road to Mecca

And I know with startling clarity that such an undertaking might indeed take an entire lifetime.
Page 48.
The Road to Mecca (1954)

Life, Books, World, Understanding

“If a few people who have come together for the same purpose sit around a table, we can understand them as parallels making up a unity, like the petals of a flower. When we are happy we do not like to hear a discordant voice that disturbs our joy. Proverbially, it is said: Birds of a feather flock together. In all these examples parallelism, or the principle of repetition, can be pointed out. And this parallelism of experience is, in expression, translated into the formal parallelism which we have already discussed.”

Ferdinand Hodler (1853–1918) Swiss artist

from: Die Kunst Ferdinand Hodlers, 1923

Happiness, People, Flowers, Understanding

“I knew you wanted to tell me;
In your voice there was something wrong.
But if you would turn your face away from me,
You cannot tell me you're so strong.
Just let me ask of you one small thing.
As we have shared so many tears,
With fervor our dreams we planned a whole life long
Now are scattered on the wind…”

Sarah McLachlan (1968) Canadian musician, singer, and songwriter

The Path of Thorns
Song lyrics, Solace (1992)

Life, Dreams, Tear, Strong

“She is one of the most intelligent singers I've worked with for a very long time, - there are little reminders in her voice, of all sorts of other singers like Eartha Kitt and Edith Piaf, - of whom she has never heard. She exudes a modest confidence, she is completely sure of herself and has a maturity far in advance of her age.”

Katie Melua (1984) British singer-songwriter

Mike Batt about.com http://top40.about.com/od/artistsdk/p/katiemelua.htm About

Age, Confidence, Intelligence, Time

“Anderssen voiced it well when asked why he did not play as brilliantly as usual in his game with Morphy, when he replied: "Morphy will not let me."”

Paul Morphy (1837–1884) American chess player

About Source: As quoted in Lasker's Chess Magazine https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lasker%27s_Chess_Magazine/Volume_1

Game

“I would have done it all again. I would have destroyed them all. Yet I would have spared one. I would have spared her that showed me Him whose presence I had not fathomed or maybe never even known. Great God, how early it is! Until now I had almost forgotten His name.
“Come!” the voice booms, but commanding me now: Come, My son! I turn in surrender.
Surely I come quickly. Amen.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
Oh how bright and fair the morning star …”

William Styron book The Confessions of Nat Turner

Part IV : "It Is Done…"
The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967)

God, Star

“Mr. Martin Tanner, a baritone, of Dayton, Ohio made his Town Hall debut last night. He came well prepared, but unfortunately his presentation was not up to contemporary professional standards. His voice lacks the range of tonal color necessary to make it consistently interesting.
Full time consideration of another endeavor might be in order.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Mr. Tanner
Song lyrics, Short Stories (1974)

Color, Time, Night

“.. even happens that each character has to sing a different text, resulting in a chorus. The varied nature of the paintings should be attributed less to the author than to the varies nature of the characters to be portrayed. The author [= Charlotte Salomon] has tried.... to go completely out of herself to allow the characters to sing or speak in their own voices. In order to achieve this, many artistic values had to be renounced, but I hope that.... this will be forgiven.”

Charlotte Salomon (1917–1943) German painter

The author, St. Jean, August 1940/42 Charlotte's 6th introduction page, related to image no. 4155-6 https://charlotte.jck.nl/detail/M004155-fJHM: '..even happens that each character..', p. 46 this quote is written in brush over the whole page of the painting, without any figure Charlotte Salomon - Life? or Theater?

Hope, Nature, Singing, Painting

“If the songs are dreamed, it's like my voice is coming out of their dream.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Quoted in Robert Shelton's No Direction Home (1986), p. 281

Dreams

“It’s an old story, perhaps the oldest on earth,” Joan said. “The sky rumbles, the clouds congeal, the sun spasms. Is that a saint I see on high? An angel? The Lord God Jehovah himself? Now a holy voice booms down, instructing the poor prophet to grab a sword and thrust it into a fellow human, or perhaps a hundred fellow humans, or even a million if the cause is sufficiently sacred. The prophet never talks back. The tradition existed before me. It flourishes to this day. The sword, the blood, the freshly created corpses littering the battlefield, exuding the stink of epiphany.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 10 (p. 243)

God, Angels, Sun

“Here was irrefutable proof that he was using the Holocaust to speak of the extermination of animal life. Doomed creatures that could not speak for themselves were being given the voice of a most articulate people who had been similarly doomed. He was seeing the tragic fate of animals through the tragic fate of Jews. The Holocaust as allegory.”

Yann Martel (1963) Canadian author best known for the book Life of Pi

Source: Beatrice & Virgil (2010), p. 173

Life, Fate, People, Animals

“The most important of the beat poets. He was a really true poet with an original voice, probably the most lyrical of those poets.”

Nancy Peters (1936) American writer and publisher

Carol Ness, "Beat Poet Gregory Corso, 70, Dies of Cancer" http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/01/18/MN143830.DTL, San Francisco Chronicle, 2001-01-18. : On Gregory Corso. 2000s

“In recent decades, new voices have appeared on the contemporary Islamic intellectual map, vying for a place with the now hugely influential Salafi approach to Islam, generally characteristic of Islamism, and that of its traditionalist opponents. These are the voices of new Muslim intellectuals which, taken together, capture an emerging trend in Muslim interpretation.”

Suha Taji-Farouki (1950) British Islamic scholar

Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur'an, OUP, Oxford 2004

Appearance

“From a high tower I have looked to the four points of the horizon.
I will go and lift up the dead on the battlefield.
I will stretch out their contorted arms and legs.
I will close their cold eyelids on their fixed pupils.
I cannot bear to see eyes if I do not receive any words.
Invisible life entrusts us with sad tasks,
I look back to my years, and the pains I have suffered
are not enough.
Soon there will be clashings of men and horrible clanging sounds.
And people hunted, pushed, wrenched.
Also I will find myself in the midst of the madness of war.
I will open pure words, orders of thought, fraternal acts.
In the meantime they will bring forward the man
condemned to death and they will tell him to dig his own grave.
He will look up at the still hills and the sky.
Some distant sounds of life will still reach him.
He will not have time to think back to his many days –
to the voices of his dear people, and the close relationships.
Not even will he be able to look ahead,
to come to terms with what is happening now.
And when the shots will be fired, with the flash a cry will go up
The human cry which is too late, and it’s lost.
To free, to free as soon as possible.
They will ask me: why don’t you come to fight with us?
They will not understand, they will carry on with the war.
I loved to be with other people, as the light of the day.
It is so good to work together, in trust, in mutual help.
To lose myself in the crowd in modest clothes.
In a circle of equals to listen and to speak.
And now nobody wants to listen, and yet they are all people.
I have become a stranger, the others do not know that I am there.
The abrupt reply, the friend who looks the other way.
It would be easy to join them in earnest action.
Forgetting the deeper unity, beyond the war?
I remain here, isolated from everybody,
working for a deeper togetherness.
Everything was only a trial, reality must yet begin.
Every being was partaking of another reality yet he did not know.
But now this reality is becoming clear,
and it matters only what opens us to it.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Love, Life, Death, Men

“He who, when called upon to speak a disagreeable truth, tells it boldly and has done is both bolder and milder than he who nibbles in a low voice and never ceases nibbling.”

Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) Swiss poet

No. 302
Aphorisms on Man (c. 1788)

Truth

“I heard the voice of your revolution… As Shah of Iran as well as an Iranian citizen, I cannot but approve your revolution… Let all of us work together to establish real democracy in Iran … I make a commitment to be with you and your revolution against corruption and injustice in Iran.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Broadcast to the nation. November 5
Speeches, 1978

Democracy

“Richard’s ex-girlfriends were long gone, but their voices followed him all the time and spoke to him, like Muses or Furies. It was like having seven superegos arranged in a firing squad before a single beleaguered id, making sure he didn’t enjoy that last cigarette.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Thanksgiving (prologue)
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

Time

“"Pull yourself together," said the Voice, "for you have to do the job I've chosen for you."Mr. Marvel blew out his cheeks, and his eyes were round."I've chosen you," said the Voice. "You are the only man except some of those fools down there, who knows there is such a thing as an invisible man. You have to be my helper. Help me—and I will do great things for you. An invisible man is a man of power."”

H. G. Wells book The Invisible Man

Source: The Invisible Man (1897), Chapter 9: Mr. Thomas Marvel

Fools, Help

“Brand: Answer me, God, in the jaws of death:
Is there no salvation for the Will of Man?
No small measure of salvation?
[The avalanche buries him. The valley is swallowed up. ]
A Voice: [Calls through the crashing thunder] He is the God of Love.”

Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet

Act V
Brand (1866)

Love, Death, God

“Labour can claim with some confidence that it is both voicing the demands of nearly all enlightened educationalists and working for the only organization of education which will enable the community to make the best use of the most precious of its natural resources — the endowments of its children.”

R. H. Tawney (1880–1962) English philosopher

Secondary Education For All (1922)

Children, Education, Confidence, Communication

“Anti-Islamist Muslims - who wish to live modern lives, unencumbered by burqas, fatwas and violent visions of jihad - are on the defensive and atomized. However eloquent, their individual voices cannot compete with the roar of militant Islam's determination, money (much of it from overseas) and violence. As a result, militant Islam, with its West-phobia and goal of world hegemony, dominates Islam in the West and appears to many to be the only kind of Islam.”

Daniel Pipes (1949) U.S. neoconservative columnist, author, counter-terrorism analyst, and scholar of Middle Eastern history

Voices of Islam, New York Post, September 23, 2003.

Money, World, Appearance

“He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

"Never Again Would Birds’ Song Be the Same
1940s

Bird

“What you get as a wiki reader is access to people who had no voice before.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Exploring with Wiki

People

“The creation of the following paintings is to be imagined as follows: A person is sitting beside the sea. She is painting. A tune suddenly enters her mind. As she starts to hum it, she notices that the tune exactly matches what she is trying to commit to paper. A texts forms in her head, and she starts to sing the tune, with her own words, over and over again in a loud voice until the painting seems complete. Frequently, several texts take shape, and the result is a duet, or it..”

Charlotte Salomon (1917–1943) German painter

Charlotte's 5th introduction page, related to image JHM no. 4155-5 https://charlotte.jck.nl/detail/M004155-e: 'The creation of the following..', p. 45 this quote is written in brush over the whole page of the painting, without any figure Charlotte Salomon - Life? or Theater?

Imagination, Singing, Painting, Personality

“We journalists… have to be brave enough to defy those who seek our collusion in selling their latest bloody adventure in someone else's country… That means always challenging the official story, however patriotic that story may appear, however seductive and insidious it is. For propaganda relies on us in the media to aim its deceptions not at a far away country but at you at home… In this age of endless imperial war, the lives of countless men, women and children depend on the truth or their blood is on us… Those whose job it is to keep the record straight ought to be the voice of people, not power.”

John Pilger (1939) Australian journalist

The War You Don't See, ITV1 (UK), Tuesday 14 December 2010

Women, Men, War, Children

“Anais Nin gave me my most original, or so I thought, creation.As I read Incest, I realized that something which I had always taken to be unique, the voice of Myra Breckinridge, was actually that of Anaïs in all the flowing megalomania of the diaries. Of course, I had not read the diaries then, but even so, if only for that one thundering voice, I am forever in her debt.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Source: 1990s, Palimpsest : A Memoir (1995), Ch. 7: "Today My Nerves Are Shattered. But I Am Indomitable!," pp. 107-108

Reading

“Sing your song, unforgiving siren,
Part the curtain clouds with your faithful entrance,
And clear your voice.
Pour your song of milk onto this land of yours.”

Masiela Lusha (1985) Albanian actress, writer, author

"Full Moon - A Siren's Song" http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/full-moon-a-siren-s-song/ Drinking the Moon (2006)

Faith, Singing, Parting

“Political power automatically gravitates toward the center, and the purpose of the Constitution is to prevent that from happening. The centralization of political power always destroys liberty by removing the decision-making function from the people on the local level and transferring it to the officers of the central government. This process gradually benumbs the spirit of "voluntarism" among the people, and they lose the will to solve their own problems. They also cease to be involved in community affairs. They seek the anonymity of oblivion in the seething crowds of the city and often degenerate into faceless automatons who have neither a voice nor a vote.”

W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-based political theorist

The 5,000 Year Leap (1981)

People, Communication, Problem, Decision

“I think," Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, "that I when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all that I didn't do. All that I might have been and couldn't be. All the choices I didn't make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that haven't been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I lived, the breath I breathed.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, The Other Wind (2001), Chapter 5, “Rejoining” (p. 286)

Love, Life, World, Thinking

“The song seraphically free
Of taint of personality,
So pure that it salutes the suns
The voice of one for millions,
In whom the millions rejoice
For giving their one spirit voice.”

George Meredith (1828–1909) British novelist and poet of the Victorian era

The Lark Ascending, l. 95-100.

Sun, Personality

“The better the singer's voice is, the harder it is to believe what they're saying. So I turn my weaknesses into an advantage.”

David Byrne (1952) Scottish alternative rock musician and promoter of world music

In the self-interview on Stop Making Sense

“For a moment, sitting there in above the city, I imagined life outside narcissism. I wondered how beautiful it might be to think of others as more important than myself. I wondered at how peaceful it might be not to be pestered by that childish voice that wants for pleasures and attention. I wondered what it would be like not to live in a house of mirrors, everywhere I go being reminded of myself.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Life, Pleasure, Peace, Beauty

“Was this the trick of it? Secrets so dire as to be unspeakable, thoughts so frightening as to make clear young voices mute, kicked out into the open with blunt ironic humor. And suddenly the dire didn't loom so darkly any more, and fear shrank, and anyone could say anything. And the unbearable seemed a little easier to lift.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, A Civil Campaign (1999)

Secret, Fear

“Empowering those moderate and reforming voices who speak for the vast majority of Muslims that want to reclaim their religion. And addressing the identity crisis that some young people feel by bringing our communities together and extending opportunity to all.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2015, Speech on extremism (20 July 2015)

People, Religion, Feeling, Communication

“The Corn Law is as great a robbery of the man who follows the plough as it is of him who minds the loom…If there be one view of the question which stimulates me to harder work in this cause than another, it is the fearful sufferings which I know to exist amongst the rural laborers in almost every part of this kingdom…And then a fat and sleek dean, a dignitary of the Church and a great philosopher, recommends for the consumption of the people—he did not read a paper about the supplies that were to be had in the great valley of the Mississippi—but he said that there were swede, turnip and mangel-wurzel; and the Hereditary Earl Marshal of England, if to out-Herod Herod himself, recommends hot water and a pinch of curry-powder. The people of England have not, even under thirty years of Corn Law influence, been sunk so low as to submit tamely to this insult and wrong. It is enough that a law should be passed to make your toil valueless, to make your skill and labor unavailing to procure for you a fair supply of the common necessaries of life—but when to this grievous iniquity they add the insult of telling you to go, like beasts that perish, to mangel-wurzel, or to something which even the beasts themselves cannot eat, then I believe the people of England will rise, and with one voice proclaim the downfall of this odious system.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech at an Anti-Corn Law League meeting (summer 1843), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 93-94.
1840s

Life, People, Fear, Law

“Any such material, received through the board, through automatic writing, or voice communication, should be carefully studied. Generally speaking, if your messages claim to originate from famous dead personalities, you can discount them as valid information. In all probability, they are creative fabrications of your own personal subconscious.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: How To Develop Your ESP Power (1966), p. 31

Communication, Study, Personality, Dead

“Although Saussure recognized the necessity of putting the phonic substance between brackets ("What is essential in language, we shall see, is foreign to the phonic character of the linguistic sign" [p. 21]. "In its essence it [the linguistic signifier] is not at all phonic" [p. 164]), Saussure, for essential, and essentially metaphysical, reasons had to privilege speech, everything that links the sign to phone. He also speaks of the "natural link" between thought and voice, meaning and sound (p. 46). He even speaks of "thought-sound" (p. 156). I have attempted elsewhere to show what is traditional in such a gesture, and to what necessities it submits. In any event, it winds up contradicting the most interesting critical motive of the Course, making of linguistics the regulatory model, the "pattern" for a general semiology of which it was to be, by all rights and theoretically, only a part. The theme of the arbitrary, thus, is turned away from its most fruitful paths (formalization) toward a hierarchizing teleology:… One finds exactly the same gesture and the same concepts in Hegel. The contradiction between these two moments of the Course is also marked by Saussure's recognizing elsewhere that "it is not spoken language that is natural to man, but the faculty of constituting a language, that is, a system of distinct signs …," that is, the possibility of the code and of articulation, independent of any substance, for example, phonic substance.”

Jacques Derrida book Positions

Source: Positions, 1982, p. 21

Motivation, Nature, Parting

“Directing an austere look at Tubby’s receding back, she spoke in a cold crisp voice which sounded in the drowsy stillness like ice tinkling in a pitcher.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Summer Moonshine

Summer Moonshine (1938)

“And if so many brave men and women could sacrifice their lives for our most fundamental rights, then surely we can do our parts as citizens of this great democracy to exercise those rights. Surely we can get to the polls on an election day and make our voices heard.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2010s, Democratic National Convention speech (2012)

Women, Men, Exercises, Democracy

“I am convinced that the decisive factor in dramatic effect will be a smaller orchestra, which does not drown out the human voice as does a large orchestra…The orchestra of the opera of the future is the chamber orchestra which, by painting in the background of the action on the stage with crystalline clearness, can alone realise precisely the intention of the composer with regard to the vocal parts. It is after all an important desideratum that the audience should not only hear the sounds but should also be able to follow the words closely.”

Richard Strauss (1864–1949) German composer and orchestra director

On composing and conducting (page 39-40) (1929).
Recollections and Reflections

Decision, Future, Parting, Painting

“Brother Leon arrived late for the performance. His late entrance was not a surprise. Everybody knew that Leon hated the student skits and sketches. Too often there had been hilarious takeoffs on the faculty and, a few years ago, a devastating burlesque of Brother Leon by a student named Henry Boudreau. Boudreau had minced across the stage, speaking in a prissy voice, wielding an oversized baseball bat the way Leon used his teacher's pointer, as a weapon. The performance had become a legend at Trinity. But funny thing about Boudreau: He had flunked out at the end of the year.”

Robert Cormier book Beyond the Chocolate War

Source: Beyond the Chocolate War (1985), p. 246-247

Hate, Way, Teachers

“Goethe, as lately quoted by Matthew Arnold, said those who have science and art have religion; and added, let those who have not science and art have the popular faith; let them have this escape, because the others are closed to them. Without any hold upon the ideal, or any insight into the beauty and fitness of things, the people turn from the tedium and the grossness and prosiness of daily life, to look for the divine, the sacred, the saving, in the wonderful, the miraculous, and in that which baffles reason. The disciples of Jesus thought of the kingdom of heaven as some external condition of splendor and pomp and power which was to be ushered in by hosts of trumpeting angels, and the Son of man in great glory, riding upon the clouds, and not for one moment as the still small voice within them. To find the divine and the helpful in the mean and familiar, to find religion without the aid of any supernatural machinery, to see the spiritual, the eternal life in and through the life that now is--in short, to see the rude, prosy earth as a star in the heavens, like the rest, is indeed the lesson of all others the hardest to learn.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Source: The Light of Day (1900), Ch. IV: Natural Versus Supernatural

Life, People, Faith, Religion

“Day and night, and every moment, there are voices about us. All the hours speak as they pass; and in every event there is a message to us; and all our circumstances talk with us; but it is in Divine language, that worldliness misunderstands, that selfishness is frightened at, and that only the children of God hear rightly and happily.”

William Mountford (1816–1885) English Unitarian preacher and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 266.

God, Children, Selfishness, Night

“In the course of reading he became more and more melancholy and finally became completely gloomy. When the reading was over he uttered in a voice full of sorrow: "Goodness, how sad is our Russia!"”

Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) Russian writer

On Alexander Pushkin in Four Letters Concerning Dead Souls (1843)

Sadness, Reading

“It's amazing what success will do. I've just started a new book after taking a break of a year and a half since finishing 'The Book of Evidence,' and I'm fascinated to see if I can detect in myself a voice saying, 'Tone that bit down; make that bit easier; give them a few laughs,' which would be absolutely fatal. I don't think it's happening, but you can't tell what's happening beneath the surface.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

Once More Admired Than Bought, A Writer Finally Basks in Success (1990)

Books, Thinking, Success

“Derangement is the signature expression of the Great Backlash, a style of conservatism that first came snarling onto the national stage in response to the partying and protests of the late sixties. While earlier forms of conservatism emphasized fiscal sobriety, the backlash mobilizes voters with explosive social issues — summoning public outrage over everything from busing to un-Christian art — which it then marries to pro-business economic polices. Cultural anger is marshaled to achieve economic ends. And it is these economic achievements — not the forgettable skirmishes of the never-ending culture wars — that are the movement’s greatest monuments. The backlash is what has made possible the international free-market consensus of recent years, with all the privatization, deregulation, and de-unionization that are its components. Backlash ensures that Republicans will continue to be returned to office even when their free-market miracles fail and their libertarian schemes don’t deliver and their "New Economy" collapses. It makes possible the police pushers’ fantasies of “globalization” and a free-trade empire that are foisted upon the rest of the world with such self-assurance. Because some artist decides to shock the hicks by dunking Jesus in urine, the entire plant must remake itself along the lines preferred by the Republican Party, U. S. A.The Great Backlash has made the laissez-faire revival possible, but this does not mean that it speak to us in the manner of the capitalists of old, invoking the divine right of money or demanding that the lowly learn their place in the great chain of being. On the contrary; the backlash imagines itself as a foe of the elite, as the voice of the unfairly persecuted, as a righteous protest of the people on history’s receiving end. That is champions today control all three branches of government matters not a whit. That is greatest beneficiaries are the wealthiest people on the plant does not give it pause.”

Thomas Frank book What's the Matter with Kansas?

Introduction: What's the Matter with America (pp. 5-6).
What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004)

Money, War, People, World

“The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

“The Leaders of Men”, speech at the University of Tennessee (17 June 1890), in The Politics of Woodrow Wilson, p. 74 http://books.google.com/books?id=rxC4IG60KTwC&pg=PA74&dq=%22ear+of+the+leader+must+ring+with+the+voices+of+the+people%22 1890s

People

“On the artist, Charley Patton, who changed him: What happened was I was going out on a Saturday night, so I went into my mam’s bedroom, she’s got a double mirror, really kitsch 50s. So I’m in there, doing that, and she’s got an old alarm clock where the radio comes on, but she never learned how to do it properly. And it came on. […] I remember it was ten past three in the afternoon and it was winter, it was getting dark, and it was when the BBC had just started doing Telstar live things from America. It was some station in Memphis - one of those classic names, ‘RK 51’ or whatever. […] On it came and there’s this record. The satellite thing was a bit cloudy and it was a 78 record and there was compression on the radio, so it was this strange kind of musical blur with this voice coming through: Charley Patton. […] On that night I told the bass player of one of the local bands that I’d heard this record and it sounded weird, it sounded like a violin. He said, ‘No, it’s not a violin, it’s a slide guitar.’ I thought, ‘What’s one of them?”

Chris Rea (1951) English singer-songwriter

2017

Music, Learning, Winter, Change

“He walks without legs,
hears without ears,
does all the deeds without hands.
He enjoys all the juices without a mouth,
spells all the truth without a voice,
touches everything without hands.
He see very object without eyes
and inhales all the scents without a breath.”

Tulsidas (1532–1623) Hindu poet-saint

Tulsidas’s definition of God in verse quoted in A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics http://books.google.co.in/books?id=5em1y2PczVgC&pg=PA36, p. 36

Truth