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

Song

Faith and joy are the ascensive forces of song.

Stedman.

The lively Shadow-World of Song.

Schiller.

Songs consecrate to truth and liberty.

Shelley.

Odds life! must one swear to the truth of a song?

Prior.

And heaven had wanted one immortal song.

Dryden.

Song forbids victorious deeds to die.

Schiller.

Little dew-drops of celestial melody.

Carlyle.

Vocal portraits of the national mind.

Lamb.

Oh, she will sing the savageness out of a bear.

Shakespeare.

That music in itself, whose sounds are song,
The poetry of speech.

Byron.

A careless song, with a little nonsense in it now and then, does not misbecome a monarch.

Horace Walpole.

Soft words, with nothing in them, make a song.

Edmund Waller.

The fineness which a hymn or psalm affords
Is when the soul unto the lines accords.

Herbert.

Short swallow-flights of song, that dip
Their wings in tears, and skim away.

Tennyson.

There is a certain flimsiness of poetry which seems expedient in a song.

Shenstone.

It was his nature to blossom into song, as it is a tree’s to leaf itself in April.

Alexander Smith.

A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.

Henry Giles.

The song that we hear with our ears is only the song that is sung in our hearts.

Ouida.

The song on its mighty pinions
Took every living soul, and lifted it gently to heaven.

Longfellow.

What is the voice of song, when the world lacks the ear to taste?

Hawthorne.

I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglass, that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet.

Sir Philip Sidney.

All great song, from the first day when human lips contrived syllables, has been sincere song.

Ruskin.

Song is the tone of feeling.***If song, however, be the tone or feeling, what is beautiful singing? The balance of feeling, not the absence of it.

J. C. and A. W. Hare.

Unlike my subject now***shall be my song,
It shall be witty and it sha’n’t be long!

Earl of Chesterfield.

Because the gift of Song was chiefly lent,
To give consoling music for the joys
We lack, and not for those which we possess.

Bayard Taylor.

They sang of love and not of fame;
Forgot was Britain’s glory;
Each heart recalled a different name,
But all sang “Annie Laurie.”

Bayard Taylor.

Every pert young fellow that has a moving fancy, and the least jingle of verse in his head, sets up for a writer of songs, and resolves to immortalize his bottle or his mistress.

Steele.

Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.

Longfellow.

Now, good Cesario, but that piece of song,
That old and antique song we heard last night;
Methought it did relieve my passion much,
More than light airs and recollected terms
Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times:
Come, but one verse.

Shakespeare.

Although music appeals simply to the emotions, and represents no definite images in itself, we are justified in using any language which may serve to convey to others our musical expressions. Words will often pave the way for the more subtle operations of music, and unlock the treasures which sound alone can rifle, and hence the eternal popularity of song.

Hugh R. Haweis.

Every modulated sound is not a song, and every voice that executes a beautiful air does not sing. Singing should enchant. But to produce this effect there must be a quality of soul and voice which is by no means common even with great singers.

Joubert.

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