Vowels Quotes

• Always end the name of your child with a vowel, so that when you yell the name will carry.

  Bill Cosby

  Funny, Mom, Children

  Twitter post from Nov 02, 2009

  66 Copy quote

  Show source

• Playing 'bop' is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

  Duke Ellington

  Music, Missing You, Playing Jazz

  1954 In Look, 10 Aug.

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• Vowels are the most illuminated letters in the alphabet. Vowels are the colors and souls of poetry and speech. (1976 Penthouse interview)

  Patti Smith

  Color, Soul, Letters

  14 Copy quote

• Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t very much. Language consists of five basic sounds produced by the vocal cords. They are the vowels a, e, i, o, u. The other sounds are consonants produced by air pressure: s, f, g, and so forth. Do you believe some combination of such basic sounds could ever explain who you are, or the ultimate purpose of the universe, or even what a tree or stone is in its depth?

  Eckhart Tolle

  Spiritual, Believe, Reality

  Eckhart Tolle (2006). “A New Earth (Oprah #61): Awakening to Your Life's Purpose”, p.31, Penguin

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• School is consonantal in its unchanging schedule. God, full of possibility, is a vowel. Death: the ultimate consonant.

  Myla Goldberg

  School, Schedules, Possibility

  Myla Goldberg (2005). “Bee Season”, Anchor

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Gun, Teeth, Speak

  "Fight Club". www.imdb.com. 1999.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• French is, in many ways, more difficult for an English-speaking person to sing. It is so full of complex and trying vowels. It requires the utmost subtlety.

  Alma Gluck

  Trying, Way, Difficult

  8 Copy quote

• When you make a melody that doesn't come with words from the get-go, sometimes you're just thinking about random vowel sounds that go with it - and it's really, really hard to write lyrics that actually obey the vowel sounds.

  David Longstreth

  Writing, Thinking, Sound

  "Dirty Projectors". Interview with Brandon Stosuy, pitchfork.com. July 2, 2012.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The big political news, Arnold Schwarzenegger announced he's running for governor of California, and already, people are chanting, 'Four more vowels, four more vowels.

  Craig Kilborn

  Running, California, People

  7 Copy quote

• For my convalescence, I had to exercise my voice only with vowels. It is a medical rule after a long loss of voice.

  Nana Mouskouri

  Loss, Exercise, Voice

  85 Copy quote

• Every poet knows the pun is Pierian, that it springs from the same soil as the Muse?a matching and shifting of vowels and consonants, an adroit assonance sometimes derided as jackassonance.

  Louis Untermeyer

  Spring, Soil, Shifting

  1965 Bygones.

  66 Copy quote

  Show source

• Life's a wheel of fortune and y'all can't buy a vowel.

  Lil' Kim

  Philosophy, Wheels, Fortune

  Song: Who's Number One?, Album: The Notorious K.I.M.

  73 Copy quote

  Show source

• Brute animals have the vowel sounds; man only can utter consonants.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Animal, Men, Sound

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1835). “Specimens of the table talk”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• God have mercy on the sinner Who must write with no dinner, No gravy and no grub, No pewter and no pub, No bellyand no bowels, Only consonants and vowels.

  John Crowe Ransom

  Writing, Pewter, Dinner

  1955 Poems and Essays,'Survey of Literature'.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm going to say a phrase or terminology or vowel that I don't know how to attack .

  Lake Bell

  Phrases, Know How, Terminology

  "Actress Lake Bell, first female voice of Apple ads, is taking over Hollywood one project at a time". Interview with Jason Guerrasio, www.businessinsider.com. November 30, 2015.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but ay, And that bare vowel ay shall poison more Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice. I am not I,if there be such an ay, Or those eyes shut,that make thee answer ay: If he be slain say ay,or if not,no: Brief sounds,determine of my weal or woe.

  William Shakespeare

  Eye, Sound, Poison

  William Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, George Steevens (1773). “Romeo and Juliet. Hamlet. Othello. Appendixes”, p.82

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• When we listen to improvisational jazz, or solo classical violinists, the way they phrase and inflect melodies feels vocal, like they’re talking to us. When I was figuring out how to perform solo, I wanted to move back and forth between bass riffs, melody, and harmony, so I often used sounds instead of — or alongside — the words of a song. I found that if I sang a line using the consonants, vowels, shadings, and inflection we recognize as human language sounds, people responded as if I were talking to them.

  Bobby McFerrin

  Song, Moving, Talking

  "Sing Your Prayers: An Interview With Bobby McFerrin". Omega Institute Interview, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 11, 2012.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• [On the United States:] A nation which does not appreciate that the simple elocution exercise 'Merry Mary married hairy Harry' contains not one but three vowel sounds.

  Jessica Mitford

  Exercise, Simple, Appreciate

  11 Copy quote

• We can translate word and letter into color - [Arthur] Rimbaud stated that in his color vowels, words quote "words" can be read in silent color.

  William S. Burroughs

  Color, Letters, Arthur

  Source: realitystudio.org

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't use my lips. I use my tongue to make - create the vowels.

  Dolora Zajick

  Use, Tongue, Lips

  "For Opera Powerhouse Dolora Zajick, 'Singing Is Connected To The Body'". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. March 19, 2014.

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• Bill Door was impressed. Miss Flitworth could actually give the word "revenue", which had two vowels and one diphthong, all the peremptoriness of the word "scum.

  Terry Pratchett

  Doors, Two, Giving

  3 Copy quote

• If you are serious about volleyball, the only months to stop playing are those without a vowel.

  John Kessel

  Sports, Volleyball, Months

  3 Copy quote

• On the last drafts, I focus on the words themselves, including the rub of vowels and consonants, stressed and unstressed syllables. Yet even at this stage I'm often surprised. A different ending or a new character shows up and I'm back to where I began, letting the story happen, just trying to stay out of the way.

  Ron Rash

  Character, Focus, Trying

  3 Copy quote

• My family is from Liverpool, so I have some of those vowel sounds, I've got the slack tone of someone from Birmingham, and then I was raised in Bedford, which is just north of London. So my accent, if it's possible, makes even less sense to a Brit than to an American.

  John Oliver

  Sound, London, Tone

  11 Copy quote

• The mantras, however, are mysterious and each word is profound in meaning. When they are transliterated into Chinese, the original meanings are modified and the long and short vowels are confused. In the end we can get roughly similar sounds but not precisely the same ones. Unless we use Sanskrit, it is hardly possible to differentiate the long and short sounds. The purpose of retaining the source materials, indeed, lies here.

  Kukai

  Confused, Lying, Long

  11 Copy quote