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He who sings, frightens away all his ills.
-Anon.
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Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character; it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.
-W. H. Auden
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It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.
-Joan Baez
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It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.
-Hilaire Belloc
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When an opera star sings her head off, she usually improves her appearance.
-Victor Borge
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That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, lest you should think he never could recapture the first fine careless rapture!
-Robert Browning
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After about three lessons my voice teacher said, 'Don't take voice lessons. Do it your way. You're a song stylist. Always do it your way.'
-Johnny Cash
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Swans sing before they die -- t'were no bad thing did certain persons die before they sing.
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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The songs are inspired by my experiences. Sometimes they are more than my real-life and, conversely, my life is more than just my songs.
-Melissa Etheridge
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If a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation.
-Andrew Fletcher
Conversation Concerning a Right Regulation of Governments for the Common Good of Mankind, 1704
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Let who will make the laws of a nation so long as I am permitted to make her songs.
-Andrew Fletcher
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If a song's about something I've experienced or that could've happened to me it's good. But if it's alien to me, I couldn't lend anything to it. Because that's what soul is all about.
-Aretha Franklin
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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
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This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.
-Horace
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I'd rather be dead than singing Satisfaction when I'm forty-five.
-Mick Jagger
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It is not worth singing for ourselves; it is nicer if two people sing together. Then more people: hundreds, thousands, until the huge Harmony can be heard, in which we can all be just one, indeed. Then will we be able to say:
-Zolt
Bicinia Hungarica, 1937
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O, how wonderful is the human voice! It is indeed the organ of the soul! The intellect of man sits enthroned visibly upon his forehead and in his eye; and the heart of man is written upon his countenance. But the soul reveals itself in the voice only; as God revealed himself to the prophet of old in the still, small voice; and in a voice from the burning bush. The soul of man is audible, not visible. A sound alone betrays the flowing of the eternal fountain, invisible to man!
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Hyperion, Book III, Chapter III. Interlachen
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The minstrel fell but the foeman's chain
could not break his proud soul under.
The harp he loved ne'er spoke again,
for he tore its chords asunder,
And said, No chains shall sully thee,
thou soul of love and brav'ry!
Thy songs were made for the pure and free;
they shall never sound in slav'ry.
-Thomas Moore
The Minstrel Boy
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If your neighbor looks at you like they don't enjoy the key you're singing in, look right back, bless them, and keep on singing.
-Odetta, Spoken live live at a concert in Oswego, NY (concert series Songs of the Spirit), November 13, 2007
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There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.
-Edgar Allan Poe
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Odds life! must one swear to the truth of a song?
-Matthew Prior
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Songs are funny things. They can slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons. Penetrate hard shells. I always believed that the right song at the right moment could change history.
-Pete Seeger
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When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.
-George Bernard Shaw
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The thing that influenced me most was the way Tommy played his trombone. . . . It was my idea to make my voice work in the same way as a trombone or violin not sounding like them, but playing the voice like those instrumentalists.
-Frank Sinatra
In Frank Sinatra by Nancy Sinatra, 1985
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I would rather be remembered by a song than by a victory.
-Alexander Smith
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Books about Singing
