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Singers: Quotations from Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations
Some sins do bear their privilege on earth.— Shakespeare — King John. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 261.
Though some of you with Pilate wash your hands Showing an outward pity; yet you Pilates Have here deliver'd me to my sour cross, And water cannot wash away your sin. γ.— Shakespeare — Richard II. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 239.
They say sin touches not a man so near As shame a woman; yet he too should be Part of the penance, being more deep than she Set in the sin.— S. SWINBURNE — Tristram of Lyonesse. Sailing of the Swallow. L. 360.
Forever singing, as they shine, The hand that made us is divine. bb.— ADDISON — Ode. The Spacious
Firmament on High. 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 — The Bloody Brother. Act III. Sc. 2. Song.
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.— BYRON — Don Juan. Canto IV. St. 87.
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 seemed the music melted in the throat.— C. DRYDEN — Flower and the Leaf. L. 197.
Olympian bards who sung Divine ideas below, Which always find us young And always keep us so.— EMERSON — Ode to Beauty.
So she poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit.— NATH. HAWTHORNE — Mosses from an
Old Manse. The Birthmark. 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 — The Singers.
He the sweetest of all singers.— LONGFELLOW — Hiawatha. Pt. VI. L. 21.
Sang in tones of deep emotion, Songs of love and songs of longing.— LONGFELLOW — Hiawatha. Pt. XI. L. 136.
Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing Such notes as, warbled to the string, Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek.— MILTON — Il Penseroso. L. 105.
Who, as they sung, would take the prison'd soul And lap it in Elysium.— MILTON — Comus. L. 256.
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 — Fingal. Bk. III. St. 1.
Sweetest the strain when in the song The singer has been lost.— ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS — The Poet
and the Poem. SKY (THE). 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 — Summer. L. 81.
Silence, ye wolves! while Ralph to Cynthia howls, And makes night hideous; -Answer him, ye owls!— POPE — The Dunciad. Bk. 3. L. 165.
But one puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes.— Shakespeare — Winter's Tale. Act IV. Sc. 3. L. 46.
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 — All's Well that Ends Well. Act III. Sc. 7. L. 39.
His tongue is now a stringless instrument.— Shakespeare — Richard II. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 149.
Nay, now you are too flat And mar the concord with too harsh a descant.— Shakespeare — Two Gentlemen of Verona. Act I. Sc. 2. L. 94.
O! she will sing the savageness out of a bear.— Shakespeare — S. Othello. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 200.
Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung With feigning voice verses of feigning love. Midsummer-Night's Dream. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 30. Sing again, with your dear voice revealing A tone Of some world far from ours, Where music and moonlight and feeling Are one.— SHELLEY — To Jane. The Keen Stars
were Twinkling. I do but sing because I must, And pipe but as the linnets sing.— TENNYSON — In Memoriam. Pt. XXI.
SKY (THE). And they were canopied by the blue sky, So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful, That God alone was to be seen in Heaven.— BYRON — The Dream. St. 4.
The mountain at a given distance In amber lies; Approached, the amber flits a little,- And that's the skies!— EMILY DICKINSON — Poems.
Second Series. Ed. 1891. SKY (THE). How bravely Autumn paints upon the sky The gorgeous fame of Summer which is fled!— HOOD — Written in a Volume of
Shakspeare. From hyperborean skies, Embodied dark, what clouds of vandals rise.— POPE — Dunciad. III. L. 85.
Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful, never the same for two moments together; almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost Divine in its infinity.— RUSKIN — The True and Beautiful.
The Sky. The moon has set In a bank of jet That fringes the Western sky, The pleiads seven Have sunk from heaven And the midnight hurries by; My hopes are flown And, alas! alone On my weary couch I lie.— SAPPHO — Fragment.
J. S. Easby-Smith's trans. This majestical roof fretted with golden fire.— Shakespeare — Hamlet. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 312.
Heaven's ebon vault, Studded with stars unutterably bright, Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, Seems like a canopy which love has spread To curtain her sleeping world.— SHELLEY — Queen Mab. Pt. IV.
Of evening tinct, The purple-streaming Amethyst is thine.— THOMSON — Seasons. Summer. L. 150.
Green calm below, blue quietness above.— WHITTIER — The Pennsylvania Pilgrim. St. 113.
The soft blue sky did never melt Into his heart; he never felt The witching of the soft blue sky!— WORDSWORTH — Peter Bell. Pt. I. St. 15.