19th-century Singer Quotes

Enrico Caruso
Maurice Chevalier
Al Jolson
Ma Rainey
Florence Foster Jenkins
Ida Cox
Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones

An artist carries on throughout his life a mysterious, uninterrupted conversation with his public.

Maurice Chevalier
Maurice Chevalier
A personality devoted uniquely to its own development absorbs other lives.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain't heard nothing yet. Wait a minute I tell you. You ain't heard nothing yet. Do you want to hear 'Toot, Toot, Tootsie'?

Al Jolson
Al Jolson
If you wish to understand me at all (and to write an autobiography is only to open a window into one's heart) you must understand first and foremost, that I am an Australian.

Nothung, Nothung, envious sword — what is the sword Nothung, but that unbreakable legacy which Siegfried, as the only son of the father, re-tempers in the fire of youth. What else, but the symbol of the primal-sword (primal-Phallus!) The primal-father has stuck this primal-sword into the trunk of the primal-tree, and whoever pulls out this sword wins a woman with it — as bride and sister! These are no symbols of sexual-abstinence!

Theodor Reuss
Theodor Reuss
People may say I can't sing, but no one can ever say I didn't sing.

Florence Foster Jenkins
Florence Foster Jenkins
It was he who impressed, time and again, the necessity of singing as nature intended, and - I remember - he constantly warned, don't let the public know that you work. So I went slowly. I never forced the voice.

Enrico Caruso
Enrico Caruso
For what mission can be greater than that of giving to the world hours of exaltation in which it may forget the misery of the present, the cares of everyday life and lose itself in the eternally pure world of harmony...

In the days when we went gypsying
A long time ago;
The lads and lassies in their best
Were drest from top to toe.

Wild women don't worry.
Wild women don't have the blues.

Ida Cox
Ida Cox
They say I do do it, ain't nobody caught me,
Sure got to prove it on me.
Went out last night with a crowd of my friends,
They must've been women, 'cause I don't like no men.

Ma Rainey
Ma Rainey
If you knew what a sensation of the nearness of a higher power one instinctively feels when one is permitted to contribute to the good of mankind, as I have done, and still do! Believe me, it is a great gift of God's mercy!

The flowers absorb the sunshine because it is their nature. I give out melody because God filled my soul with it.

Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones
Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones