The greatest joy is in sorrow, for here there is the greatest love.
Other joys are only on the surface. We suffer and we weep because we
love. Of what avail are tears? The essential thing is to love. Tears are
the accessories; they will come in time, they need not be sought.
Nothing so wearies and disgusts us, as the lachrymose tone. A man who
amounts to anything is never a whimperer.

Take two instruments in discord and remote from each other. Logic
forbids their approach lest their tones become more disagreeable. The
reverse is true. In bringing them together, the lowest becomes higher
and the highest lower, and there is an accord.

Let us suppose a hall with tapestries, a church draped in black. Logic
says, "sing more loudly." But this must be guarded against lest the
voice become lost in the draperies. The voice should scarce reach these
too heavy or too sonorous partitions, but leaving the lips softly, it
should pulsate through the audience, and go no farther.

An audience is asleep. Logic demands more warmth, more fire. Not at all.
Keep silent and the sleepers will awaken.

2. Sound, notwithstanding its many shades, should be homogeneous; that
is, as full at the end as at the beginning. The mucous membrane, the
lungs and the expiratory muscles have sole charge of its transmission.
The vocal tube must not vary any more for the loud tone than for the low
tone. The opening must be the same. The low tone must have the power of
the loud tone, since it is to be equally understood. The acoustic organs
should have nothing to do with the transmission of sound. They must be
inert so that the tone may be homogeneous. The speaker or singer should
know how to diminish the tone without the contraction of the back part