Sunday Salute XXVIII

Beverly Sills was my favorite Opera Singer. I was able to see her live here in Ames at the Stephens Auditorium and to meet her after the concert. I told her that if I could only have one night in the theater in my life that I would be satisfied with that night listening to her sing.

Found this on the Web.

Born in Brooklyn, Beverly Sills began singing on CBS Radio at the age of 7. During the 1950s and 60s, she sang with the Philadelphia Civic Opera, the San Francisco Opera, and the Opera Company of Boston before being catapulted into international stardom singing Cleopatra in New York City Opera’s landmark 1966 production of Handel’s Julius Caesar. 

Acknowledged as "America’s Queen of Opera," she appeared on the cover of Newsweek in 1969 and Time in 1971, and traveled to the world’s leading opera houses as an ambassador for American talent. In 1975, she made a triumphal Metropolitan Opera debut as Pamina in Rossini’s The Siege of Corinth, receiving an 18-minute ovation.

Retiring from singing, she became Director of the New York City Opera (1979-1989), then Chairman of Lincoln Center (1994-2002), and finally Chairman of the Metropolitan Opera (2002-2005). She made numerous television appearances, sharing her love of opera with millions of people. She was also Chairman of the Multiple Sclerosis Society and National Chairman of the March of Dimes Foundation, where she helped to raise over $80 million for combating childhood disabilities.


Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality.

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.

Art is the signature of civilizations.

A happy woman is one who has no cares at all; a cheerful woman is one who has cares but doesn't let them get her down.

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.

A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.

In youth we run into difficulties. In old age difficulties run into us.

My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.

My voice had a long, nonstop career. It deserves to be put to bed with quiet and dignity, not yanked out every once in a while to see if it can still do what it used to do. It can't.

I lived through the garbage. I might as well dine on the caviar.

Attachment to spiritual things is... just as much an attachment as inordinate love of anything else.

Anger begins with folly, and ends with repentance.

Christians should never fail to sense the operation of an angelic glory. It forever eclipses the world of demonic powers, as the sun does a candle's light.

You don't always get what you ask for, but you never get what you don't ask for... unless it's contagious!

There is a growing strength in women but it's in the forehead, not the forearm.

I've always tried to go a step past wherever people expected me to end up.

Jimmy Carter 
Ellen DeGeneres  Edward "Ted" Kennedy  Paul Newman
Michelle Obama  Audrey Hepburn     Princess Diana    Harry S Truman   
John Shelby Spong  Nelson Mandella      Rachael Maddow   Matt Damon  
Jehan Sadat   Jane Goodall    Mohandas Gandhi  
 Eleanor Roosevelt    Lyndon B. Johnson      Michelle Obama
Helen Hayes   Marion Wright Edelman     Bishop Gene Robinson
Bishop Desmond Tutu       Rachel Carson          Helen Keller
Martin Luther King, Jr          Dalai Lama         Dag Hammarskjold