You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him sing opera.

Opera is when a tenor and soprano want to make love, but are prevented from doing so by a baritone

I feel moved to sing. It is very wrong to resist an impulse to sing; to hold back a natural evacuation of joy is as injurious as to hold back any other natural issue. It makes a man spiritually costive, and plugs him up with hard, caked, thwarted merriment. This, in the course of time, poisons his whole system and is likely to turn him into that most detestable of beings, a Dry Wit. God grant that I may never be a Dry Wit. Let me ever be a Wet Wit! Let me pour forth what mirth I have until I am utterly empty — a Nit Wit.

To sing a wrong note is insignificant, but to sing without passion is unforgivable.

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even can enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

Why was there never an opera that ended with a soprano who was free?

Opera in English, is about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

You may think there’s no point in singing unless you are good at it, but that is like saying there is no point in doing anything at all unless you are particularly gifted at it, which is ridiculous.

This is a fault common to singers that among their friends they were never inclined to sing when they were asked, unasked they never desist.

Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.

anyone who expects love to be sensible has perhaps never loved.

You can cage the singer but not the song.

Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.

You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.