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. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice and augments regular speech by the use of sustained tonality, rhythm, and a variety of vocal techniques. A person who sings is called a singer or vocalist.
1.1 Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
Sing again, with your dear voice revealing
A tone
Of some world far from ours,
Where music and moonlight and feeling
Are one. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley
[W]ant to bring it? Bring it. But, we ain't singing. We're bringing drama.
2Pac, "Hit Em Up" (4 June 1996), California: Death Row Records
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.
Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto IV, Stanza 87.
Come, sing now, sing; for I know you sing well;
I see you have a singing face.
John Fletcher, The Wild Goose Chase (c. 1621; published 1652), Act II. 2.
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.
John Fletcher, Rollo Duke of Normandy, or The Bloody Brother, (c. 1617; revised c. 1627–30; 1639), Act III, scene 2. Song
The softer you sing, the louder you're heard.
Donovan interviewed in the first issue Rolling Stone magazine (9 November 1967); also in Pop Chronicles, Show 48 - The British are Coming! The British are Coming!: With an emphasis on Donovan, the Bee Gees and the Who.
I suffer so much in this life, Doro. That is what they feeling when I sing, that is why they cry. People who felt nothing in this life cannot sing. Once I had a great suffering and from it came a new voice.
Enrico Caruso, as quoted in Enrico Caruso - His Life and Death, by Dorothy Caruso
She loves to laugh; she loves to sing. She does everything.
Steve Perry, "Any Way You Want It" (February 1980), Departure, Columbia Records
A singer … is no more than an actor set to music.
Kay Starr, Pop Chronicles, Show 2 - Play A Simple Melody: American pop music in the early fifties. Part 2, interview recorded 11.2.1967.
Sing, sing a song
Sing out loud, sing out strong
Sing of good things not bad
Sing of happy not sad.
Make it simple to last your whole life long
Don't worry that it's not good enough
For anyone else to hear
Just sing, sing a song.
Joe Raposo, in "Sing" (1972)
If I cannot sing where there is death, then I cannot sing in life, because life is a continuous death.
Zhuang Zhou, as quoted in Meetings with Remarkable People (2017), by Osho
Ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d'être dit, on le chante.
That which is not worth speaking they sing.
Pierre de Beaumarchais, Barbier de Séville, I. 1.
Quien canta, sus males espanta.
He who sings frightens away his ills.
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, I. 22.
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.
John Dryden, Flower and the Leaf, line 197.
Y'ought to hyeah dat gal a-warblin'
Robins, la'ks an' all dem things
Heish de mouffs an' hides dey faces
When Malindy sings.
Paul Laurence Dunbar, When Malindy Sings.
Olympian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,
Which always find us young
And always keep us so.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ode to Beauty.
I see you have a singing face — a heavy, dull, sonata face.
George Farquhar, The Inconstant, Act II. 1.
When I but hear her sing, I fare
Like one that raised, holds his ear
To some bright star in the supremest Round;
Through which, besides the light that's seen
There may be heard, from Heaven within,
The rests of Anthems, that the Angels sound.
Owen Feltham, Lusoria, XXXIV. Appeared as a poem of Suckling's beginning "When dearest I but think of thee." Claimed by Feltham in note to ed. 1690, 1696 of his Resolves, Divine, Moral, Biblical
Then they began to sing
That extremely lovely thing,
"Scherzando! ma non troppo, ppp."
W. S. Gilbert, Bab Ballads, Story of Prince Agib.
So she poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from an Old Manse, The Birthmark.
He the sweetest of all singers.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha (1855), Part VI, line 21.
Sang in tones of deep emotion,
Songs of love and songs of longing.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha (1855), Part XI, line 136.
And bring them back to heaven again.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Singers.
Ils chantent, ils payeront.
They sing, they will pay.
Cardinal Mazarin. Originally "S'ils cantent la cansonette ils pageront." A patois.
Who, as they sung, would take the prison'd soul
And lap it in Elysium.
John Milton, Comus (1637), line 256.
Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing
Such notes as, warbled to the string,
Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek.
John Milton, Il Penseroso (1631), line 105.
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, Book III, Stanza 1.
Sweetest the strain when in the song
The singer has been lost.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, The Poet and the Poem.
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!
Alexander Pope, Summer, line 81.
You know you haven't got a singing face.
William Barnes Rhodes, Bombastes Furioso (1810).
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.
William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well (1600s), Act III, scene 7, line 39.
Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung
With feigning voice verses of feigning love.
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595-96), Act I, scene 1, line 30.
O! she will sing the savageness out of a bear.
William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act IV, scene 1, line 200.
His tongue is now a stringless instrument.
William Shakespeare, Richard II (c. 1595), Act II, scene 1, line 149.
Nay, now you are too flat
And mar the concord with too harsh a descant.
William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1590s), Act I, scene 2, line 94.
But one puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes.
William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610-11), Act IV, scene 3, line 46.
Are one.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, To Jane, The Keen Stars were Twinkling.
If a singer knows only one song but makes the sound pleasant, he is indeed a singer! [...] When a singer's voice is sweet, he is indeed a singer.
Sumerian proverb, Collection II at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, 3rd millennium BCE.
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