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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Singers

He the sweetest of all singers.

Longfellow.

O! she will sing the savageness out of a bear.

Shakespeare.

His tongue is now a stringless instrument.

Shakespeare.

  • I do but sing because I must,
  • And pipe but as the linnets sing.
  • Tennyson.

  • When God helps all the workers for His world,
  • The singers shall have help of Him, not last.
  • Mrs. Browning.

    For my voice, I have lost it with hollaing and singing of anthems.

    Shakespeare.

  • Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung
  • With feigning voice verses of feigning love.
  • Shakespeare.

    But one Puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes.

    Shakespeare.

  • Forever singing, as they shine,
  • The hand that made us is divine.
  • Addison.

  • Sweetest the strain when in the song
  • The singer has been lost.
  • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

    So she poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit.

    Nath. Hawthorne.

    I love a ballad but even too well; if it be doleful matter, merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed, and sung lamentably.

    Shakespeare.

  • Sang in tones of deep emotion,
  • Songs of love and songs of longing.
  • Longfellow.

  • ***Songs of that high art
  • Which, as winds do in the pine,
  • Find an answer in each heart.
  • Longfellow.

  • I send my heart up to thee, all my heart
  • In this my singing!
  • For the stars help me, and the sea bear part.
  • Robert Browning.

    Singing has nothing to do with the affairs of this world: it is not for the law. Singers are merry, and free from sorrows and cares.

    Martin Luther.

  • Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing
  • Such notes as, warbled to the string,
  • Drew iron tears down Pluto’s cheek.
  • Milton.

  • God sent His Singers upon earth
  • With songs of sadness and of mirth,
  • That they might touch the hearts of men,
  • And bring them back to Heaven again.
  • Longfellow.

  • Olympian bards who sung
  • Divine ideas below,
  • Which always find us young
  • And always keep us so.
  • Emerson.

  • At every close she made, th’ attending throng
  • Replied, and bore the burden of the song:
  • So just, so small, yet in so sweet a note,
  • It seem’d the music melted in the throat.
  • Dryden.

  • Three merry boys, and three merry boys,
  • And three merry boys are we,
  • As ever did sing in a hempen string
  • Under the gallow-tree.
  • Beaumont and Fletcher.

  • Above the clouds I lift my wing
  • To hear the bells of Heaven ring;
  • Some of their music, though my flights be wild,
  • To Earth I bring;
  • Then let me soar and sing!
  • E. C. Stedman.

    Among all the instruments which sound in Haydn’s child’s concerts, that best serves the purposes of educational music which is born with the performer,—the voice. In the childhood of nations speaking was singing.

    Richter.

  • Sing, seraph with the glory! heaven is high.
  • Sing, poet with the sorrow! earth is low.
  • The universe’s inward voices cry
  • “Amen” to either song of joy and woe.
  • Sing, seraph, poet! sing on equally!
  • Mrs. Browning.

  • Sing again, with your dear voice revealing
  • A tone
  • Of some world far from ours,
  • Where music and moonlight and feeling
  • Are one.
  • Shelley.

  • Every night he comes
  • With musics of all sorts and songs compos’d
  • To her unworthiness; it nothing steads us
  • To chide him from our eaves; for he persists
  • As if his life lay on’t.
  • Shakespeare.

  • But would you sing, and rival Orpheus’ strain,
  • The wond’ring forests soon should dance again;
  • The moving mountains hear the powerful call,
  • And headlong streams hang listening in their fall!
  • Pope.

  • The tenor’s voice is spoilt by affectation,
  • And for the bass, the beast can only bellow;
  • In fact, he had no singing education,
  • An ignorant, noteless, timeless, tuneless fellow;
  • But being the prima donna’s near relation,
  • Who swore his voice was very rich and mellow,
  • They hired him, though to hear him you’d believe
  • An ass was practicing recitative.
  • Byron.

    O Carril, raise again thy voice! let me hear the song of Selma, which was sung in my halls of joy, when Fingal, king of shields, was there, and glowed at the deeds of his fathers.

    Ossian.