Ballads Quotes

• Everyone who knows me knows that I'm a hopeless romantic who listens to love ballads and doo-wop songs all the time.

  Henry Rollins

  Romantic, Song, Hopeless

  Interview with Stephen Thompson, www.avclub.com. August 26, 1998.

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• You can't imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life.

  Bob Dylan

  Music, Drifting Off, Kind

  "Bob Dylan Sounds Off On The Origin Of His New Record, Parlor Music, Dr. Dre, And Who His Songs Are About". Interview with Bill Flanagan, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 20, 2009.

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• Fergie will sing ballads to the dogs and they'll sit there rapt. You know your wife's a star when she keeps the dogs entertained for 20 minutes.

  Josh Duhamel

  Dog, Stars, Wife

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• I love theatrics and have a huge imagination: Why would I want to sit onstage and sing a bunch of ballads back-to-back?

  Christina Aguilera

  Imagination, Want, Bunch

  "Christina: Intimate Talk About a Past That Still Hurts". Interview with Laurie Sandell, www.glamour.com. November 30, 2006.

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• I'd like to do a pop album with an R and B influence. I definitely want to have those big ballads with the uptempo hits as well.

  Pia Toscano

  Want, Albums, Influence

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• My favorite type of music to sing is definitely those big ballads, I just love doing those power ballads.

  Pia Toscano

  My Favorite, Bigs, Type

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• I subscribe to that school of thespian - to be a wandering minstrel or traveling player, a thing of rags and patches, of ballads, songs and snatches.

  Julian Sands

  Song, School, Player

  "The Delightfully Prickly Julian Sands". Interview with Michelle Orange, www.ifc.com. August 3, 2009.

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• It's true, there's a lot of melancholy in my music. I don't know why, I'm not a melancholy person. I've always been drawn to it. Ever since I was a kid, if I had an album I would play the ballads on repeat.

  Norah Jones

  Kids, Play, Albums

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• A well-composed song strikes the mind and softens the feelings, and produces a greater effect than a moral work, which convinces our reason, but does not warm our feelings, nor effect the slightest alteration in our habits

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Song, Feelings, Mind

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• Well the country songs themselves are three-chord stories, ballads which are mostly sad. If you are already feeling sorry for yourself when you listen to them they will take you to an even sadder place.

  Willie Nelson

  Country, Song, Sorry

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• I think that ballads are always something where I can really become one with the audiance.

  Namie Amuro

  Thinking, I Can

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• But I think beautiful is simple and elegant, like a ballad with simple harmony.

  John Fogerty

  Beautiful, Simple, Thinking

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• I love a ballad but even too well if it be doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed and sung lamentably.

  William Shakespeare

  Matter, Doleful, Wells

  William Shakespeare, Joseph Dennie, Isaac Reed, Samuel Johnson, George Steevens (1805). “Taming of the shrew. Winter's tale. Comedy of errors”, p.267

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• A ballad once in a while doesn't go amiss

  Chrissie Hynde

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• I had rather be a kitten and cry mew Than one of these same metre ballet-mongers.

  William Shakespeare

  Ballet, Cry, Kitten

  'Henry IV, Part 1' (1597) act 3, sc. 1, l. [128]

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• Some people resemble ballads which are only sung for a certain time.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  People, Certain

  "Maxims". No. 220,

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• I have a passion for ballad. . . . They are the gypsy children of song, born under green hedgerows in the leafy lanes and bypaths of literature,--in the genial Summertime.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Song, Children, Passion

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1861). “Hyperion, a romance. Kavanagh, a tale”, p.79

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• I wanted to bring back that big, ballad type of music that we used to love so much. Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, when they first came out, that's what I grew up singing.

  LaToya London

  Singing, Houston, Firsts

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• More solid things do not show the complexion of the times so well as Ballads and Libels.

  John Selden

  Libel, Shows, Wells

  John Selden, Richard Milward (1821). “Seldeniana: with a biographical preface”, p.80

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• I like to sing ballads the way Eddie Fisher does and the way Perry Como does. But the way I'm singing now is what makes the money.

  Elvis Presley

  Money, Sight, Singing

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• The farmer's daughter hath soft brown hair And I met with a ballad, I can't say where, That wholly consisted of lines like these.

  Charles Stuart Calverley

  Daughter, Hair, Lines

  Charles Stuart Calverley, “The Auld Wife”

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• In nearly all ballads, the words set the mood and meaning, while the music intensifies or enhances them.

  Kate Smith

  Mood

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• In Van Halen there were moments, like in some of the ballads, I put my heart and soul into those records. Those lyrics when I sang 'em, I gave myself goosebumps.

  Sammy Hagar

  Heart, Soul, Ems

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  Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.

  William Wordsworth

  Powerful, Poetry, Feelings

  Lyrical Ballads 2nd ed., preface (1802) See Dorothy Parker 24

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• The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on the plain at West Point?but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that old soldiers never die; they just fade away.

  Douglas MacArthur

  Soldier, West, World

  1951 Address to Congress after being relieved of his duty by President Truman,19 Apr.

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