Famous quotes containing the words opera in, opera, english and/or century:
“If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“The opera isn’t over till the fat lady sings.”
—Anonymous.
A modern proverb along the lines of “don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.” This form of words has no precise origin, though both Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (16th ed., 1992)
“A blind man will not thank you for a looking-glass.”
—Eighteenth-century English proverb. Collected in Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia (1732)
“Bring a wife home to your house when you are of the right age, not far short of 30 years, nor much above; this is the right time for marriage.”
—Hesiod (c. 8th century B.C.)