Luciano Pavarotti Quotes

I think an important quality that I have is that if you turn on the radio and hear somebody sing, you know it's me. You don't confuse my voice with another voice.

I remember when I began singing, in 1961, one person said, "run quick, because opera is going to have at maximum 10 years of life." At the time it was really going down. But then, I was lucky enough to make the first Live From the Met telecast. And the day after, people stopped me on the street. So I realized the importance of bringing opera to the masses. I think there were people who didn't know what opera was before. And they say "Bohème", and of course "Bohème is so good."

I'm not a politician, I'm a musician. I care about giving people a place where they can go to enjoy themselves and to begin to live again. To the man you have to give the spirit, and when you give him the spirit, you have done everything.

Ignorance is a dreadful thing and has caused no end of damage to the human race.

The body of the history is only a long narrative, and as such it must go on with a soft and even motion, alike in every part, so that nothing should stand too forward, or retreat too far behind.

The good historian, then, must be thus described: he must be fearless, uncorrupted, free, the friend of truth and of liberty; one who, to use the words of the comic poet, calls a fig a fig, and a skiff a skiff, neither giving nor withholding from any, from favour or from enmity, not influenced by pity, by shame, or by remorse; a just judge, so far benevolent to all as never to give more than is due to any in his work; a stranger to all, of no country, bound only by his own laws, acknowledging no sovereign, never considering what this or that man may say of him, but relating faithfully everything as it happened.

For history, I say again, has this and this only for its own: if a man will start upon it, he must sacrifice to no God but Truth; he must neglect all else; his sole rule and unerring guide is this – to think not of those who are listening to him now, but of the yet unborn who shall seek his converse.

The historian's one task is to tell the thing as it happened.

I say, therefore, that he who would write history well must be possessed of these two principal qualifications, a fine understanding and a good style: one is the gift of nature, and cannot be taught; the other may be acquired by frequent exercise, perpetual labour and an emulation of the ancients.

If the brave should fly, he who pursues must be braver.

Everything has a beauty peculiar to itself; but if you put one instead of another, the most beautiful becomes ugly, because it is not in its proper place.

In history, nothing fabulous can be agreeable.

History, when she adds pleasure to utility, may attract more admirers; though as long as she is possessed of that greatest of perfections, truth, she need not be anxious concerning beauty.

He is unpardonable, therefore, who cannot distinguish one from the other; but lays on history the paint of poetry, its flattery, fable, and hyperbole: it is just as ridiculous as it would be to clothe one of our robust wrestlers, who is as hard as an oak, in fine purple, or some such meretricious garb, and put paint on his cheeks; how would such ornaments debase and degrade him!

These men seem not to know that poetry has its particular rules and precepts; and that history is governed by others directly opposite.