Famous quotes containing the words rochester, opera and/or house:
“The clog of all pleasure, the luggage of life,
Is the best can be said for a very good wife.”
—John Wilmot, Earl Of Rochester (1647–1680)
“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)
“Of all the riddles of a married life, said my father ... there is not one that has more intricacies in it than this—that from the very moment the mistress of the house is brought to [child]bed, every female in it ... becomes an inch taller for it....
I think rather, replied my uncle Toby, that ‘tis we who sink an inch lower.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)