Song Of Albion Quotes

Kingship wrought of Infinite worship,
Quick-forged by the Swift Sure Hand;
Bold in Righteousness,
Valiant in Justice,
A sword of honor to defend the clans of Albion! ~ Stephen R. Lawhead

Bright-kindled from heavenly flames,
framed of Love's all-consuming fire,
Ignited of purest passion,
Burning in the Creator King's heart,
A splendor of bliss to illuminate Albion! ~ Stephen R. Lawhead

I tell you the truth, a man may not make himself king; only the blessing of him who holds the kingship can elevate a man to that high place. For sovereignty is a sacred trust that may not be bartered or sold; still less may it be stolen or taken by force. ~ Stephen R. Lawhead

Apart from pleasure, beauty also kindles imagination, hope and encouragement. If beauty ceased to exist, we would, in a very real sense, cease to exist
for we would be no longer who we are. ~ Stephen R. Lawhead

My dad [Johnny Cash] went to the [Richard] Nixon White House and refused to sing "Welfare Cadillac" (instead performing the anti-war songs "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" and "Man in Black"). He protested the Vietnam War, but he went to perform for the troops with bombs dropping all around him. He had that kind of genius: a true artist's capacity for holding two opposing thoughts at once while being large enough to encompass all realities. ~ Rosanne Cash

When forever becomes a place ... when forever ceases to be just a word ... when it ceases to be just a measurement of time ... but instead becomes a place where soul mates can dance to the song in their hearts ... that is a reflection of true love. ~ Steve Maraboli

It is the custom on the stage: in all good, murderous melodramas: to present the tragic and the comic scenes, in as regular alternation, as the layers of red and white in a side of streaky, well-cured bacon. The hero sinks upon his straw bed, weighed down by fetters and misfortunes; and, in the next scene, his faithful but unconscious squire regales the audience with a comic song. We behold, with throbbing bosoms, the heroine in the grasp of a proud and ruthless baron: her virtue and her life alike in danger; drawing forth a dagger to preserve the one at the cost of the other; and, just as our expectations are wrought up to the highest pitch, a whistle is heard: and we are straightway transported to the great hall of the castle: where a grey-headed seneschal sings a funny chorus with a funnier body of vassals, who are free of all sorts of places from church vaults to palaces, and roam about in company, carolling perpetually.

Such changes appear absurd; but they are not so unnatural as they would seem at first sight. The transitions in real life from well-spread boards to death-beds, and from mourning weeds to holiday garments, are not a whit less startling; only, there, we are busy actors, instead of passive lookers-on; which makes a vast difference. The actors in the mimic life of the theatre, are blind to violent transitions and abrupt impulses of passion or feeling, which, presented before the eyes of mere spectators, are at once condemned as outrageous and prep ~ Charles Dickens

A good song can make you smile, or it can make you dance or laugh or remind you of a moment. ~ Charli XCX

My loving sister Mary has always shared the pain and pleasure of my heartbeat in a unique and special way. We have sung our sad and warm songs together. ~ John Henrik Clarke

In so many of my songs, I'm trying to touch on various aspects of love. ~ Five For Fighting

For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men! ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A Summer's Singing"

"Where does that singing start, you know,
that thin sound - almost pure light?
Not the birds at false dawn or their song
when morning comes, feathered throats
warm with meaning. A different kind of music.

Listen, it is somewhere near you.
In the heart, emptied of fear,
stubbornly in love
with itself at last, the old
desires a ruined chorus,
a radiant bloody choir.

Where does the singing start?
Here, where you are, there's room
between your heartbeats,
as if everything you have ever been
begins, inside, to sing. ~ Lorna Crozier

I try to write songs. At our concerts, we take the cream of the crop from my back catalogue and I don't know if I could write something now that would replace any of that. We don't lose any of the standards. We have lots of songs in rotation. ~ Gordon Lightfoot

Toward the end, a band that had a young fellow from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - I remember on account of him saying it two or three times and laughing every time that he did - played a song called 'All She Gets from the Iceman is Ice.' It made the grown folks, most of them anyway, howl laughing. I don't think I ever seen Mama laugh so hard. When it was about over, the sheriff come up and made them stop playing it, but he was grinning, too, so I figured he was just making them stop as part of the show. ~ Eddie Whitlock

I'm a little left of center, for sure, with Angels & Airwaves. But even when I get really weird, it's not that weird. It's not like some obscure Sonic Youth record or something. We don't take it quite that far. But what we do like are crescendos, and we do like when a song catches you off guard and it gives you the chills up and down your arms. ~ Tom DeLonge

Poetry is a solitary process. One does not write poetry for the masses. Poetry is a self-involved, lofty pursuit. Songs are for the people. When I'm writing a song, I imagine performing it. I imagine giving it. It's a different aspect of communication. It's for the people. ~ Patti Smith

"I Don't Want to Miss A Thing" is a hard song to perform (Laughs), I was worried that I was not going to reach that significant note that is at the end of the song. Thank god, Steven [Tyler] really loved it! He was the nicest and friendliest judge that I have met. He also invited me to chat with him whether I had free time on the Idol set. ~ Jessica Sanchez

It would be as naive to study the song of the nightingale, as it would be ridiculous to try and win a King's Gambit against a representative of the old chess guard. ~ David Bronstein

Come clean with a child heart
Laugh as peaches in the summer wind
Let rain on a house roof be a song
Let the writing on your face
be a smell of apple orchards on late June. ~ Carl Sandburg

I don't think you can cover a song unless you love it and have a relationship with it. With 'Golden Heart' I felt a sense of responsibility. And when we were recording it in the studio, it felt almost dream-like. Something you might hear if you were in Senegal, with someone singing from the mosque in the morning just as the sun's coming up. ~ Neneh Cherry

Sometimes you happen to run across a brilliant run of radio songs, where each tie one station goes to commercial, you scan to another that has just started to play a song you love but had almost forgotten about, a song you never would've picked but turns out to be perfect for shouting along to. ~ John Green

The interesting thing about a song like 'Bulletproof Heart' - it was [originally] called 'Trans Am' - the interesting thing about the amalgamation of that song was that the song also lived within us, like we all got to live with the song and it was around for about a year before we recorded it again, so the song got to really transform, which you don't really get to do. ~ Mikey Way

And when she told us her wedding song - of course, they've already picked their wedding song, and of course, it's "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong - I said that choosing that song is the sonic equivalent of buying picture frames and never replacing the photos of the models. ~ Rainbow Rowell

People say that the soul, on hearing the song of creation, entered the body, but in reality the soul itself was the song. ~ Hafez

I remember reading a book that was on songwriting at some point that I found in my dad's store, and just ... I did not relate at all. I've always hated structure of all kinds, it just doesn't work for me. I can never fit into the schedules of other people. It's like putting a schedule on your song, and it doesn't allow you to be moved by your own music. ~ Larkin Grimm

The music and lyrics of Rodgers & Hammerstein connect seamlessly. Singing those beautiful songs was a joyous experience for me, and one that I will never forget. ~ Julie Andrews

It reminded him of the Sound of Music. Myron liked the ole Julie Andrews musical well enough. who didn't? but he always found one song particularly dumb. One of the classics, actually. My Favorite Things. The song made no sense. Ask a zillion people to list their absolute favorite things, and how many of them are going to list doorbells for crying out loud.
You know what, Milly, I love doorbells. To hell with strolling on a quiet beach, or reading a great book, or making love or seeing a broadway musical. Doorbells, Milly, doorbells really punch my ticket. Sometimes I just run up to people's houses and press their doorbells and, well, I think i am man enough to admit I shutter. ~ Harlan Coben

Just because something is addictive doesn't mean that you will get addicted to it. But ... if your stomach ties up in knots while you count the seconds waiting for a phone call from that special someone ... if you hear a loud buzzing in your ears when you see a certain person's car (or one just like it) ... if your eyes burn when you hear a random love song or see a couple holding hands ... if you suffer the twin agonies of craving for and withdrawing from a series of unrequited crushes or toxic relationships ... if you always feel like you're clutching at someone's ankle and dragged across the floor as they try to leave the room ... welcome to the club. ~ Ethlie Ann Vare

... that same hardware and tackle shop his dad got lost in for hours while Kache waited in the truck, writing lyrics on the backs of old envelopes his mom kept in the glove compartment for blotting her lipstick. Kache had written around the red blooms of her lip prints. ~ Sere Prince Halverson

Bilbo's Last Song

Day is ended, dim my eyes,
But journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
Beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the Sea.

Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
The wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
Beneath the ever-bending sky,
But islands lie behind the Sun
That I shall raise ere all is done;
Lands there are to west of West,
Where night is quiet and sleep is rest.

Guided by the Lonely Star,
Beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I'll find the heavens fair and free,
And beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship, my ship! I seek the West,
And fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the Star above my mast! ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

The primary purpose of prayer is not to make requests. The primary purpose is to praise, to sing, to chant. Because the essence of prayer is a song, and man cannot live without a song.
Prayer may not save us. But prayer may make us worthy of being saved. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

I try to look at most of my solos as a musical piece within the song, not, say, showing off. ~ Richie Sambora

Greg Trooper writes great songs, including one of my very favorite songs in the world, Little Sister. On top of all that, there's his voice - an instrument I have coveted for 15 years. ~ Steve Earle

History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird. ~ Joseph Conrad

After a thousand years pass, it builds its own funeral pyre, lining it with cinnamon, myrrh and cassia. Climbing to a rest on the very top, it examines the world all throughout the night with the ability to see true good and evil. When the sun rises the next morning, with great sorrow for all that it sees, it sings a haunting song. As it sings, the heat of the sun ignites the expensive spices and the Phoenix dies in the flames.

But the Phoenix is not remarkable for its feathers or flames. It is most revered for its ability to climb from its own funeral pyre, from the very ashes of its old charred body, as a brand new life ready to live again once more. Life after life, it goes through this cycle. It absorbs human sorrow, only to rise from death to do it all again. It never wearies, it never tires. It never questions its fate. Some say that the Phoenix is real, that it exists somewhere out there in the mountains of Arabia, elusive and mysterious. Others say that the Phoenix is only a wish made by desperate humans to believe in the continuance of life.
But I know a secret.
We are the Phoenix. ~ Courtney Cole

My life has been many examples of shortsighted goals that I thought would fix things. You know, if there's something broken inside me, if there's a hole in there, I thought: If I could just write a good song someday, then I'd be OK. You know, if I could just be on stage in front of people I'd never seen before and be validated by them. ~ Trent Reznor

Thanks to the greatest invention of recent years, the MP3-playing alarm clock, I can now choose the song that wakes me up in the morning. ~ Rob Sheffield

Conservatives must avoid the siren song of schism, or all is lost. ~ John Podhoretz

I change lyrics to the songs all the time, too. I don't know if it matters in a lot of ways because you can take what you want from it. ~ Matt Corby

Sure, occasionally a certain sappy song or romantic movie would come on, and you'd wonder what he or she was up to, but there was no way to know. Of course, you could always pick up the phone (and more recently, text or e-mail), but that would require that person's knowing you were thinking of him or her. Where's the fun in that? You never want them to know you're thinking of them, so you refrain. Before long the memories start to fade. One day, you realize you can't quite remember how she smelled or the exact color of his eyes. Eventually, without ever knowing it, you just forget that person altogether. You replace old memories with new ones, and life goes on. It was the clean break you needed to move forward. ~ Brandi Glanville

Some people feel that it's controversial if I say that because my dad is known as a political artist. But I don't really believe that he was a political artist. I think some of his songs were political, and I think they were incredible because he was able to make art that was political and that wasn't pedantic. But I think he was unique in being able to do that. ~ Sean Lennon

You make me smile like the sun, fall out bed, sing like a bird, dizzy in my head. Spin like a record crazy on a sunday night. You make me dance like a fool, forget how to breath, shine like the sun buzz like a bee, just the thought of you can drive me wild. Oh you make me smile. -Uncle Kracker- ~ Uncle Kracker

The focus of my playing is the groove, and every time I find a new rhythm, I find I can write a bunch of new songs. Learning how to dance, or drum, or to swing my body in a new way is the fundamental way I find a new riff. Because when you learn to swing your body in a new way, you begin to swing with your instrument differently. ~ Stone Gossard

See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,
Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that."
-from "Song of Myself ~ Walt Whitman

You look back and see pictures of yourself, or hear an old song, and you know where that came from or why you were working on that - but you don't want to do that again. You don't necessarily hate it, but you're a very different person now, so, in that way you do. ~ Hamilton Leithauser

McCormack and Richard Tauber are singing by the bed
There's a glass of punch below your feet and an angel at your head
There's devils on each side of you with bottles in their hands
You need one more drop of poison and you'll dream of foreign lands

When you pissed yourself in Frankfurt and got syph down in Cologne
And you heard the rattling death trains as you lay there all alone
Frank Ryan brought you whiskey in a brothel in Madrid
And you decked some fucking blackshirt who was cursing all the Yids
At the sick bed of Cuchulainn we'll kneel and say a prayer
And the ghosts are rattling at the door and the Devil's in the chair

And in the Euston tavern you screamed it was your shout
But they wouldn't give you service so you kicked the windows out
They took you out into the street and kicked you in the brains
So you walked back in through a bolted door and did it all again
At the sick bed of Cuchulainn we'll kneel and say a prayer
And the ghosts are rattling at the door and the Devil's in the chair

You remember that foul evening when you heard the banshees howl
There was lousy drunken bastards singing Billy in the Bowl
They took you up to midnight mass and left you in the lurch
So you dropped a button in the plate and spewed up in the church

Now you'll sing a song of liberty for blacks and Paks and Jocks
And they'll take you from this dump you're in and ~ Shane MacGowan

I was still in and out of consciousness so much, and so emotional. But there were little things that helped. I remember at one point hearing my dad say, "He likes music. I am going to put on some music." He brought in a little red radio and left it on this Top 40 station all the time hoping to cheer me up. Top 40 stations play the same songs over and over again. At the time there was one song that stood out and struck a chord with me: Sheryl Crow's "Good is Good." I don't know what Sheryl Crow's intentions were when she wrote it, but I felt like she was singing to me directly.
I really related to this song. The words would bounce around my head even when I was asleep, about things going south and that it was up to you to make it better. Things are only as good as you make them. I felt calmer and comforted every time I heard it. ~ Noah Galloway

People said it was a song about drugs, but John Lennon said the name came from a picture his son painted of a girl at school. ~ Aminatta Forna

Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?
Where is your tribal memory? Sirs,
in that gray vault. The sea. The sea
has locked them up. The sea is History.

First, there was the heaving oil,
heavy as chaos;
then, likea light at the end of a tunnel,

the lantern of a caravel,
and that was Genesis.
Then there were the packed cries,
the shit, the moaning:

Exodus.
Bone soldered by coral to bone,
mosaics
mantled by the benediction of the shark's shadow,

that was the Ark of the Covenant.
Then came from the plucked wires
of sunlight on the sea floor

the plangent harp of the Babylonian bondage,
as the white cowries clustered like manacles
on the drowned women,

and those were the ivory bracelets
of the Song of Solomon,
but the ocean kept turning blank pages

looking for History.
Then came the men with eyes heavy as anchors
who sank without tombs,

brigands who barbecued cattle,
leaving their charred ribs like palm leaves on the shore,
then the foaming, rabid maw

of the tidal wave swallowing Port Royal,
and that was Jonah,
but where is your Renaissance?

Sir, it is locked in them sea sands
out there past the reef's moiling shelf,
where the men-o'-war floated down;

strop on these goggles, I'll guide you there myself.
It's all subtle and sub ~ Derek Walcott

When I was writing songs, I always thought I'd make more of a career out of the drawings, the comics even more than the music. ~ Daniel Johnston

That mighty orb of song, The divine Milton. ~ William Wordsworth

Animals of every kind live on the Other Side, .. you are not crazy if you feel the spirit of your cat rubbing against your legs, hear the sound of your dog's toenails clicking on the wood floor, or hear the familiar song your bird used to sing. Our pets do come back to visit us. ~ Sylvia Browne