Top 98 Tenor Quotes
#1. I don't have that kind of voice, the big baritone or rousing tenor sound. My wheelhouse was in the frothier pieces. So my appreciation for those older musicals and revivals grew.
Jesse Tyler Ferguson
#2. Chano Pozo created the role of the conga soloist in the modern band, somewhat th way Coleman Hawkins created the solo tenor sax.
Ned Sublette
#3. The uniform tenor of a man's life furnishes better evidence of what he has said or done on any particular occasion than the word of any enemy.
Thomas Jefferson
#4. Bud Johnson, God rest his soul of fame, a tenor saxophonist. Bud was always a big, big, big booster of mine and he always when I first met Bud in Pittsburgh when he came through there, he heard me sing and he wanted me to come to Chicago.
Billy Eckstine
#5. It is not unfrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty, to oppress without control or the restraint of laws all who are poorer or weaker than themselves.
Samuel Adams
#6. I used to play tenor sax in high school, man.
Sean Price
#7. The success of our operas rests most of the time in the hands of the conductor. This person is as necessary as a tenor or a prima donna.
Giuseppe Verdi
#8. God smiled on me in every sense. I was born a tenor, and you know what that means. Tenors are a rare commodity.
Marcello Giordani
#9. In fact, the capitalist class in the '50s was sort of part of a social contract. It was part of the tenor of the times.
Noam Chomsky
#10. Trust not my reading, nor my observations, Which with experimental seal do warrant The tenor of my book.
William Shakespeare
#11. Claire coaxed free another loop of cloth. The slow side of cotton against cotton matched the soft tenor or her voice.
'I have lots of talents Mr. Ryland. Listening is only one of them.
Gina Conkle
#12. Whenever I open a book about jazz, I turn to the index and look for Lennie Tristano, the incredible pianist; Lee Konitz, the luminous alto sax player; and Warne Marsh, the tenor player who captured some of the most beautiful sounds in the world.
Carolyn See
#13. Inevitably, however, a dude approached us. He was white. Jazz camp was mostly white dudes. This dude was clutching a gold-embossed tenor sax case, and on his head was a fedora with two different eagle feathers in it.
Jesse Andrews
#14. America is destined to be peopled by one nation, speaking one language, professing one general system of religious and political principles, and accustomed to one general tenor of social usages and customs.
John Adams
#15. In reply, I can only plead that a discovery which seems to contradict the general tenor of previous investigations is naturally received with much hesitation.
Charles Lyell
#16. A superb tenor voice, like a silver trumpet muffled in silk.
Alec Guinness
#17. Cyril, church warden and lead tenor in the choir, lives with mother, banned from unsupervised contact with schoolchildren; Harold, drunk dentist, early retirement, pretty thatched cottage off the Bodmin road, one son in rehab, wife in the bin.
John Le Carre
#19. The narrator, in a voice-of-God tenor, explains the experiment.
Eric Weiner
#21. Religion creates community, community creates altruism and altruism turns us away from self and towards the common good ... There is something about the tenor of relationships within a religious community that makes it the best tutorial in citizenship and good neighborliness.
Jonathan Sacks
#22. When I was a young man, I was a baritone, very far from possessing the whole range of the tenor then.
Placido Domingo
#23. Some people say there was no jazz tenor before me. All I know is I just had a way of playing and I didn't think in terms of any other instrument but the tenor.
Coleman Hawkins
#24. If by chance I seated myself to write, she very slyly, very tenderly, seeking protection and caresses, would softly take her place on my knee and follow the comings and goings of my pen - sometimes effacing, with an unintentional stroke of her paw, lines of whose tenor she disapproved.
Pierre Loti
#25. I do no damage. This is damage, this."
He picked up a paper from Camille's desk. "I can't read your writing, but I take it the general tenor is that Brissot should go and hang himself.
Hilary Mantel
#26. As much as I love creating entertaining visuals, I love toying with the pace of a movie and trying to perfect that. It's imperative to the impact: faster cuts, cuts at the right moments that meld with the tenor of a scene. Creating and maintaining that feeling.
Asif Kapadia
#27. You know what I do on Sundays? I sing in a choir. I sing in a Greek Orthodox choir, and I'm the only hillbilly tenor in the Orthodox Church.
Chris Hillman
#28. Prince or commoner, tenor or bass,
Painter or plumber or never-do-well,
Do me a favor and shut your face -
Poets alone should kiss and tell.
Dorothy Parker
#29. The tenor of my life has been the opposite of everything that is vile, and no man can lay any such thing to my charge.
Adam Weishaupt
#30. By learning to control the tenor and flow of your electromagnetic energy,
you are learning to take control of your destiny.
Lynn Grabhorn
#31. Get in first and shape the terms. He did so in quick short sentences, his smooth tenor's voice as clear and precise as it was when he sang Goethe's tragic poem.
Ian McEwan
#32. Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life.
Robert Louis Stevenson
#33. The problem of translation is to retreat to a simpler tenor of one's own style and creatively adjust this to one's author.
Paul Goodman
#34. 'The Sopranos' only reflected the tenor of how things are done in New Jersey. They didn't invent it. And I say that as a fan of both 'The Sopranos' and New Jersey.
Kevin Bleyer
#35. I got to sing with Placido Domingo ... I got to sing with Aaron Neville, who is one of my favorites. Got to sing with Brian Wilson, one of the great high tenors. And Ricky Skaggs, a bluegrass tenor. I'm also proud of my musical friendship with Emmylou Harris.
Linda Ronstadt
#36. A very small offence may be a just cause for great resentment: it is often much less the particular instance which is obnoxious to us than the proof it carries with it of the general tenor and disposition of the mind from whence it sprung.
Sir Fulke Greville
#37. Swore. "Barabas said you might say that. I'm supposed to tell you this." Ascanio cleared his throat and produced a remarkably accurate impression of Barabas's tenor. "Courage, Your Majesty." "I will kill him." "The Beast Lord or Barabas?" "Both.
Ilona Andrews
#38. Only the French, I guess, really use tenor and alto to any great extent in the orchestra.
Gerry Mulligan
#39. The cello is a hero because of its register - its tenor voice. It is a masculine instrument, whereas the violin is feminine because of its soprano pitch. When the cello enters in the Dvorak Concerto, it is like a great orator.
Mstislav Rostropovich
#40. You have to make a choice when you start to sing and decide whether you want to service the music, and be at the top of your art, or if you want to be a very popular tenor.
Alfredo Kraus
#41. When I hear that young people have come to the theater for the first time to listen to opera, I'm very happy. Because it's the same thing that happened to me as a child. When I first heard the tenor voice, I immediately fell in love with this kind of music.
Andrea Bocelli
#42. Pavarotti is dead and the streets are full of arias,
my brother. Every window a tenor leans,
there are sopranos in the olive branches.
And all across the globe the world
turns to crescendos.
Sean Thomas Dougherty
#43. There is a gentle, but perfectly irresistible coercion in a habit of reading well directed, over the whole tenor of a man's character and conduct, which is not the less effectual because it works insensibly, and because it is really the last thing he dreams of.
John Herschel
#44. The question who ought to be boss is like who ought to be the tenor in the quartet? Obviously, the man who can sing tunor.
Henry Ford
#45. An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.
Andre Maurois
#47. Next door to the Bensons is Emmet Frag, a retired pacemaker who is credited with inventing the notion of happiness. He's currently working on a method for categorising ducks based on their singing voice. He's also the owner of the world's largest collection of tenor geese.
St John Morris
#48. A human being tends to believe that the mood of the moment, be it troubled or blithe, peaceful or stormy, is the true, native, and permanent tenor of his existence.
Thomas E. Mann
#49. As much as I think John Coltrane belongs on the list, I think without Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, both of whom defined improvising on the tenor sax, there would not have been the evolution of the craft by John Coltrane.
Herbie Mann
#50. I'm not a trained musician. When folks talk about 'Well, you go to this or that' - the tenor, or the third part - I don't really know what they're talking about.
Emmylou Harris
#51. I will sing whatever I'm given to sing. Growing up, I would sing anything that I was given. If the choir needed a first tenor, I would sing first tenor. If they needed a bass, I would sing bass. Throughout my life, I just figured out ways to hit notes I needed to hit.
Josh Young
#52. The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body.
Stan Getz
#53. The baritone can serve functions that the alto and tenor cannot, in orchestral voicing.
Gerry Mulligan
#54. Leaders can change the tenor of the workplace and create harmony in motion toward a favorable result. So every time you say to your team, "Let's rock and roll," make sure you have already set up the stage to where they can actually perform like rock stars.
Thomas Huynh
#55. You really shouldn't sneak up on people in the dark, sir. It isn't gentlemanly." He responded quickly, the deep tenor of his voice sweeping over her. "My apologies. Of course, one might argue that lurking in the darkness isn't exactly ladylike.
Sarah MacLean
#56. I'm sure people are badmouthing me. I think one of the interesting parts about the criticism has been the tenor of "how dare he." How dare an insider speak critically about other insiders?
Mark Leibovich
#57. The tenor of the comments as we got closer and closer to August got dominated by 'Wouldja please get this over with' and not let us go into default.
Nan Hayworth
#58. A young tenor player was complaining to me that Coleman Hawkins made him nervous. Man, I told him Hawkins was supposed to make him nervous! Hawkins has been making other sax players nervous for forty years!
Cannonball Adderley
#59. You got to play the flute as a flute, like that. You can't play like a tenor concept on soprano; it sounds wrong. But some guys do it, and they think it's O.K., but not so!
Jerome Richardson
#60. I don't know what I was trying to get out of a tenor - but it never really satisfied me until one day I picked up my alto and I said, 'Where have you been?' and I said right here for now on!
Jerome Richardson
#61. To survive there, you need the ambition of a Latin-American revolutionary, the ego of a grand opera tenor, and the physical stamina of a cow pony.
Billie Burke
#62. When I sing, I want people to think only about the tenor and only about the music.
Jose Carreras
#63. None of us knows what the next change is going to be, what unexpected opportunity is just around the corner, waiting a few months or a few years to change all the tenor of our lives.
Kathleen Norris
#64. I'm a farmer with a mandolin and a high tenor voice.
Bill Monroe
#65. I wanted my voice to be a tenor sax, really.
Robert Plant
#66. When I started studying tenor saxophone as a kid in Belfast, I did so with a guy named George Cassidy, who was also a big inspiration.
Van Morrison
#67. My hopes of a future life are all founded upon the Gospel of Christ and I cannot cavil or quibble away ... the whole tenor of His conduct by which He sometimes positively asserted and at others countenances His disciples in asserting that He was God.
John Quincy Adams
#68. My family was very encouraging, and both of my grandparents were both beautiful singers. My grandmother was a coloratura soprano, and my grandfather was an Irish tenor in a barbershop quartet.
Clare Bowen
#69. The surname Messi comes from the Italian town of Porto Recanati, in the province of Macerata, which saw the birth of the poet Giacomo Leopardi and the tenor Beniamino Gigli.
Luca Caioli
#70. My father was a Norwegian tenor and my mother a New York Irish librarian.
David Johansen
#71. Even in 1831 Lowick was at peace, not more agitated by Reform than by the solemn tenor of the Sunday sermon. The
George Eliot
#72. Then, of course, I played alto and tenor, wherever there were jobs.
Gerry Mulligan
#73. I wish I had a better range, but I really have a super-limited one. Barely a tenor, dips into baritone - that's about it.
Colin Meloy
#74. You shouldn't talk about yourself all the time - most of us aren't for sale. Our books are. Talk about them. It's not a question of whether or not you're fascinating on a personal level - it's that your trivia and trials might not have any connection to the tone, tenor and sense of your books.
M.J. Rose
#75. He had a bright, reckless tenor that was always wandering off, looking for notes in the wrong places.
Patrick Rothfuss
#76. My grammar school graduating class in 1941 had a little party for 13 or 14 year-old kids. [Trumpeter] King Kolax's band played for the party and Gene Ammons was playing tenor saxophone with the band. And that's when I said, "That's it!" Just like that, tunnelvision ever since.
Johnny Griffin
#77. They would wake me up when I was sleeping, and say sing a song for our friends. I had a sweet voice, I had a nice little tenor voice. God knows what I sang, but my whole family would admire me.
Dominic Chianese
#78. Even in today's opera world, the position of the black tenor is problematic.
Bobby Short
#79. Handel's "He Shall Feed His Flock Like a Shepherd," a popular anthem with elaborate part singing that the congregation performed faultlessly. As hundreds of tenor voices soared across the
Ken Follett
#80. Through the sequester'd vale of rural life
The venerable patriarch guileless held
The tenor of his way.
Beilby Porteus
#81. There is a coarse and ugly temperament and tenor observable in the common unconscious person.
Bryant McGill
#82. As the tenor roars his passion, I think sadly of my spreading middle, and his.
Mason Cooley
#83. The soprano has all those other instruments in it. It's got the soprano song voice, flute, violin, clarinet, and tenor elements and can even approach the baritone in intensity.
Steve Lacy
#84. But then a bubbling tenor voice said kindly, "Do not fear. It is a dream." The reassurance spread over him like a blanket. But he could not feel it with his hands, and the ambulance kept on moving. Needing the blanket, he clenched at the empty air until his knuckles were white with loneliness.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#85. The usual tenor of a man's life, the dwelling of his soul, is the true test of his state.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#86. I kinda always wanted to be a tenor player, but I'm a small guy, and tenor was just too big.
David Sanborn
#87. They will be bound to make some arrests, he thought, with something resembling virtuous indignation, for the even tenor of his revolutionary life was menaced by no fault of his.
Joseph Conrad
#88. Alto (saxophone) is just a very hard instrument; there's so few people that play it really well. I feel it's the best one, too, now. At first I didn't feel that way; I wanted to be a tenor player. It took a long time for me to feel that alto was the most expressive of the saxophones.
Art Pepper
#89. I made the tenor sax - there's nobody plays like me and I don't play like anybody else.
Coleman Hawkins
#90. You don't try to duplicate certain things that other cats do, because you could never do it as well as they do. Nobody can get on that tenor saxophone and play like Trane, because he's the only one who can spell out chords and sound good when he does it.
Wynton Marsalis
#91. Whoever shall review his life, will find that the whole tenor of his conduct has been determined by some accident of no apparent moment.
Samuel Johnson
#93. Opera is when a tenor and soprano want to make love, but are prevented from doing so by a baritone.
George Bernard Shaw
#94. I wonder how appropriate it is to try to 'argue someone into the kingdom.' Many apologists hotly deny any such charge, but I don't believe them. The tenor of almost all apologetics literature makes it plain that this is their intent.
Robert M. Price
#95. A counter tenor is anyone who can count to ten.
Denis Norden
#96. I spent five years, at least, working with Miles. Together, we recorded ESP, Nefertiti, Sorcerer
and I can tell you; each of these albums instantly became jazz classics. Hey, we had Wayne Shorter playing tenor sax, Ron [Carter] on bass, Tony Williams played drums. That was great band we had.
Herbie Hancock
#97. But Maurice was clean-shaven, and, by the portraits shown to me, certainly quite beautiful; though he looked a little more like a tenor than a gentleman ought to look. James
G.K. Chesterton
#98. When I was very young, I started trying to sing like the great tenor Mario Lanza; my family used to play his records. We all learn best by imitating others.
Andrea Bocelli
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