Leontyne Quotes & Sayings

We should not have a tin cup out for something as important as the arts in this country, the richest in the world. Creative artists are always begging, but always being used when it's time to show us at our best. — Leontyne Price

If you're not feeling good about you, what you're wearing outside doesn't mean a thing. — Leontyne Price

Men cannot think like dogs ... [There exists] a sharp difference in the mental capacity of humans and canines. For example, a human who is given an intricate problem will spend all day trying to solve it, but a canine will have the sense to give up and do something else instead. — Corey Ford

All token Blacks have the same experience. I have been pointed at as a solution to things that have not yet begun to be solved, because pointing at us token Blacks eases consciences of millions, and this is dreadfully wrong. — Leontyne Price

The best revenge is to improve yourself. — Ali Ibn Abi Talib

If I do have some success, I'd like to enjoy it, for heaven's sake! What is the point of having it otherwise? — Leontyne Price

Pure geometrical regularity gives a certain pleasure to men troubled by the obscurity of outside appearance. The geometrical line is something absolutely distinct from the messiness, the confusion, and the accidental details of existing things. — T. E. Hulme

Momma was home. She was the most totally human, human being that I have ever known, and so very beautiful. Within our home, she was an abundance of love, discipline, fun, affection, strength, tenderness, encouragement, understanding, inspiration, support. — Leontyne Price

See, what you're meant to do when you have a mid-life crisis is buy a fast car, aren't you? Well, I've always had fast cars. It's not that. It's the fear that you're past your best. It's the fear that the stuff you've done in the past is your best work. — Robbie Coltrane

Once you get on stage, everything is right. I feel the most beautiful, complete, fulfilled. I think that's why, in the case of noncompromising career women, parts of our personal lives don't work out. One person can't give you the feeling that thousands of people give you. — Leontyne Price

The way I was taught, being black was a plus, always. Being a human being, being in America, and being black, all three were the greatest things that could happen to you. The combination was unbeatable. — Leontyne Price

I am here and you will know that I am the best and will hear me. The color of my skin or the kink of my hair or the spread of my mouth has nothing to do with what you are listening to. — Leontyne Price

Top management is supposed to be a tree full of owls ... hooting when management heads into the wrong part of the forest. I'm still unpersuaded they even know where the forest is. — Robert Townsend

We performers are monsters. We are a totally different, far-out race of people. I totally and completely admit, with no qualmsat all, my egomania, my selfishness, coupled with a really magnificent voice. — Leontyne Price

Abundance is scooped from abundance yet abundance remains. — Anne Sexton

For a long time the only time I felt beautiful-in the sense of being complete as a woman, as a human being, and even female-was when I was singing. — Leontyne Price

My word is my honor. — Rachel Vincent

Accomplishments have no color. — Leontyne Price

If you are going to think black, think positive about it. Don't think down on it, or think it is something in your way. And this way, when you really do want to stretch out and express how beautiful black is, everybody will hear you. — Leontyne Price

For when Philippe, with his snapping eyes and his wild ways, left Savannah forever, he took with him the glow that was in Ellen's heart and left for the bandy-legged little Irishman who married her only a gentle shell. — Margaret Mitchell

Now, Dr. Anderson, you've been telling us how the world began and how brilliant it was of all the scientists to be able to find it out." He paused and deployed his most innocent smile. "But of course there were no scientists around when the world began." Another pause, "Now I have a question with which Science -- I hope I'm not getting out of my league -- may be more humanly involved." Another pause. "How do you think the worldwill end? — Hugh MacLennan

You should always know when you're shifting gears in life. You should leave your era; it should never leave you. — Leontyne Price

I'm Cherokee, and there were times when social expansion was something that is needed by a cultural group or a national group. — Wes Studi

Art is the only thing you cannot punch a button for. You must do it the old-fashioned way. Stay up and really burn the midnight oil. There are no compromises. — Leontyne Price

We have come to a parting of the ways,I suppose",said Anne thoughtfully."we had to come to it,do you think,Diana,that being grown up is really as nice as we used to imagine it would be when we were children?"
"I don't know-there are SOME nice things about it,"answered Diana,again caressing her ring with that little smile which always had the effect of making Anne feel suddenly left out and inexperienced."But there are so many puzzling things,too.Sometimes I feel as if being grown-up just frightened me-and then I would give anything to be a little girl again. — L.M. Montgomery

To live his life in his own way, to call his house his castle, to enjoy the fruits of his own labour, to educate his children as his conscience directs, to save for their prosperity after his death
these are wishes deeply ingrained in civilised man. Their realization is almost as necessary to our virtues as to our happiness. From their total frustration disastrous results both moral and psychological might follow. — C.S. Lewis

The ultimate of being successful is the luxury of giving yourself the time to do what you want to do. — Leontyne Price

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well. If you can't be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be be the best little shrub on the side of the hill. — Martin Luther King Jr.

A healthy sex life. Best thing in the world for a woman's voice. — Leontyne Price

I have never given all of myself, even vocally, to anyone. I was taught to sing on your interest, not your capital. — Leontyne Price

Who I am is the best I can be. — Leontyne Price

I prefer to leave standing up, like a well-mannered guest at a party. — Leontyne Price

We have gasoline at $2 a gallon. If that doesn't drive demand, I don't know what will. — Jennifer Granholm

And that was when Sam Clay experienced a moment of global vision, one which he would afterward come to view as the one undeniable brush against the diaphanous, dollar-colored hem of the Angel of New York to be vouchsafed to him in his lifetime. — Michael Chabon