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What on earth has given opera its prestige in western civilisation — a prestige that has outlasted so many different fashions and ways of thought? Why are people prepared to sit silently for three hours listening to a performance of which they do not understand a word and of which they very seldom know the plot? Why do quite small towns all over Germany and Italy still devote a large portion of their budgets to this irrational entertainment? Partly, of course, because it is a display of skill, like a football match. But chiefly, I think, because it is irrational. "What is too silly to be said may be sung" — well, yes; but what is too subtle to be said, or too deeply felt, or too revealing or too mysterious — these things can also be sung and can only be sung.
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Ch. 9: The Pursuit of Happiness
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The quotation "What is too silly to be said may be sung" is by Pierre de Beaumarchais

 

Kenneth Clark

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I have been singing folksongs of America and other lands to people everywhere. I am proud that I never refused to sing to any group of people because I might disagree with some of the ideas of some of the people listening to me. I have sung for rich and poor, for Americans of every possible political and religious opinion and persuasion, of every race, color, and creed. The House committee wished to pillory me because it didn’t like some few of the many thousands of places I have sung for.

 

Pete Seeger

 

When I was a little baby, my mama she said "Son.
Travel where you will and grow to be a man
And sing what must be sung, poor boy
Sing what must be sung."

 

Hoyt Axton

 

Mrs. Bush: I don’t think there is anything wrong with singing it in Spanish. The point is it’s the United States national anthem and what people want is it to be sung in a way that respects the United States and our culture. At the same time, we are a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of many, many languages, because immigrants come and bring their languages.
Larry King: Is that an issue you disagree with your husband? He says it should be sung in English.
Mrs. Bush: I think it should be sung in English, of course.

 

Laura Welch Bush

 

The words of the great French anthem rang out over the town square, sung for the first time by liberated Frenchmen in the free capital of Normandy and sung with such a feeling of life and warmth as has not been heard in France for four years.

 

Larry LeSueur

 

The sword sung on the barren heath,
The sickle in the fruitful field;
The sword he sung a song of death,
But could not make the sickle yield.

 

William Blake